RICHARD   S.  STORRS. 


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THE  EARLY  AMERICAN  SPIRIT, 


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THE  GENESIS  OF  IT. 


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THE   EARLY   AMERICAN    SPIRIT,  AND 
THE   GENESIS   OF   IT. 


\ 


\ 


The  Early  American  Spirit, 


\ 


AND 


THE   GENESIS   OF    IT. 


AN    ADDRESS    DELIVERED   BEFORE   THE 


NEW   YORK    HISTORICAL   SOCIETY, 

AT  THE  CELEBRATION   OF  ITS 


SE  V EN  TIE  TH  ANN  I VERSAR  F, 
APRIL  15TH,  1875. 

BY 

RICHARD    S.   STORRS- 


N  E  W   Y  O  R  K : 
ANSON    D.   F.   RANDOLPH    &    COMPANY. 

1875. 


/ 


COPYRIGHT,  .1S75,    BY 

Anson"  D.  F.  R.\ndolph  &  Co. 


S  t  7^ 


NOTE. 

Ix  consequence  of  the  length  of  the  following-  Address, 
occasional  sentences,  with  two  or  three  entire  para- 
graphs, were  omitted  at  the  time  of  its  delivery.  Thev 
are,  however,  retained  in  the  printed  pamphlet,  as  in 
some  degree  important  to  the  exhibition  of  the  subject. 


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ADDRESS. 


Mr.  President:  Members  of  the  Historical 

Society:  Ladies,  and  Gentlemen: 

The  anniversary  by  which  we  are  assembled  marks 
the  completion  of  the  seventieth  year  of  the  useful 
life  of  this  Society.  It  is  an  occasion  of  interest  to  all 
of  us,  if  regarded  only  in  this  relation.  There  are 
some  present  who  remember  still  the  founders  of  the 
Society :  Egbert  Benson,  its  first  President,  John 
Pintard,  Brockholst  Livingston,  Dr.  John  M.  Mason, 
Drs.  Samuel  L.  Mitchill  and  David  Hosack,  Rufus 
King,  Samuel  Bayard,  Daniel  D.  Tompkins,  DeWitt 
Clinton,  and  others  whose  names  are  less  familiar. 
There  are  many  present  to  whom  are  recalled  memor- 
able faces,  by  the  names  of  those  who  in  subsequent 
years  received  its  honors,  or  shared  its  labors,  who  are 
not  now  among  the  living :  John  Jay,  Albert  Gallatin, 
John  Duer,  Dr.  McVickar,  Gulian  Verplanck,  Charles 
King,  Dr.  John  W.  Francis,  William  L.  Stone, 
Edward  Robinson,  Luther  Bradish,  Romeyn  Brod- 
head,  Dr.  De  Witt. 

All  of  us,  who  are  of  a  studious  habit,  have  enjoyed 
the  labors  and  the  influence  of  the  Society,  and  have 


Address. 

been  encouraged  and  quickened  by  it,  as  well  as  more 
directly  aided,  in  the  small  excursions  which  we  have 
made  into  the  domain  of  historical  knowledge. 

It  is  a  source,  therefore,  I  am  sure,  of  unfeigned 
satisfaction  to  all  of  us  to  be  able  this  evening  to 
congratulate  the  honored  President  of  the  Society, 
its  officers,  and  its  members,  on  the  success  which  it 
has  accomplished,  and  on  the  promise  of  increasing 
prosperity  with  which  its  future  here  salutes  us.  In 
its  incorporeal  and  continuing  life,  it  has  the  dignity 
of  age,  without  its  decays.  Its  seventy  years  have 
brought  larger  fame,  ampler  resources,  wider  responsi- 
bilities ;  but  it  has  still  the  privilege  of  youth — the 
fair  and  far  outlook  of  existence  in  its  prime.  It  pro- 
jects our  thoughts,  from  this  eminent  anniversary, 
over  the  periods  which  it  anticipates,  as  well  as  over 
that  which  it  reviews  ;  and  we  shall  joyfully  unite  in 
the  hope  that  its  coming  career  may  be  only  more  full 
of  gladness  and  growth  than  has  been  its  past,  and 
that  its  influence  may  constantly  extend,  as  the  years 
augment  its  possessions  and  its  fame. 

Such  institutions  are  beneficent  powers  in  civiliza- 
tion. Whatever  transports  us  from  the  present  to  the 
past,  from  the  near  to  the  remote,  widens  the  mind  as 
well  as  instructs  it ;  makes  it  capacious,  and  reflectiv^e  ; 
sets  it  free,  in  a  relative  independence  of  local  impulse 
and  of  transient  agitation  ;  gives  it,  in  a  measure,  a  char- 
acter cosmopolitan,  and  a  culture  universal.  Whatever 
recalls   to   us   eminent    persons  —  their   brilliant  and 


Usefulness  of  such  Societies. 

engaging  parts,  above  all,  their  fortitude,  wisdom,  self- 
sacrifice — re-enforces  our  manhood,  encourages  our  vir- 
tue, and  makes  us  ashamed  of  our  indolent  self- 
indulgence,  of  our  impatient  and  fitful  habit. 

A  community  like  ours — restless,  changeful,  abound- 
ing in  wealth,  vehemently  self-confident — especially 
needs  such  inspiring  impressions  from  a  more  austere 
and  temperate  past.  A  Society  which  presents  that, 
through  libraries  and  lectures,  is  ethical,  educational, 
and  not  merely  ornamental.  In  larger  proportions, 
with  more  copious  ministr}^,  it  fulfils  the  office  of  the 
statue  of  Erasmus,  standing  always,  with  a  book  in 
its  hand,  in  the  market-place  of  Rotterdam,  amid  the 
intricate  network  of  canals,  and  in  the  incessant  roar 
of  traffic.  It  materializes  again  the  shadowy  forms. 
It  breathes  upon  communities,  languid  or  luxurious, 
an  ennobling  force,  from  vanished  actions  and  silent 
lips.  Presenting,  as  to  immediate  vision,  the  patient 
and  achieving  years  into  whose  conquests  we  have 
entered,  it  makes  us  aware  of  the  duty  which  always 
matches  our  privilege,  and  of  the  judgment  which 
coming  time  will  strictly  pronounce  upon  our  era.  It 
ministers  to  whatever  most  aspires  in  man,  to  what- 
ever is  worthiest  in  civilization.  And  so  it  concerns 
the  public  welfare  that  this  Society  should  long  fulfill 
its  important  office,  while  the  city  expands  to  wider 
splendor,  and  the  years  fly  on  with  accelerating  haste ; 
that  this  anniversary  should  be  one  in  a  series,  stretch- 
ing forward  beyond  our  life,  beyond  the  life  of  those 


"X 


Address. 

who  succeed  us,  while  the  country  continues  the  in- 
viting and  affluent  home  of  men. 

But  this  anniversary  is  not  the  only  one  to  which 
our  thoughts  are  to-night  directed.  By  the  irresistible 
progress  of  time,  we  are  set  face  to  face  with  others 
which  are  at  once  to  occur,  the  succession  of  which, 
during  several  years,  is  to  make  large  claim  upon  our 
attention ;  and  these  are  anniversaries,  in  comparison 
with  whose  significance,  and  whose  secular  importance, 
the  one  which  assembles  us  would  lose  its  dignity  if 
it  were  not  itself  associated  with  them. 

History  can  but  picture  events;  setting  forth,  in  a 
measure,  their  causes  and  consequences,  and  indicating 
the  varieties  of  action  and  of  character  which  were  in- 
volved in  them.  It  is,  as  has  been  said,  "  the  biog- 
raphy of  communities."  These  Societies  which  pro- 
mote historical  studies  have  it  for  their  function  to 
collect  the  materials,  cultivate  the  tastes,  assist  the 
minute  and  complex  investigations,  out  of  which 
comes  the  ultimate  enlightening  historical  narrative. 
Their  office  is  therefore  subordinate  and  auxiliary, 
though  quickening  and  fine.  The  office  of  the  his- 
torians whom  they  instruct,  is  commemorative  only, 
not  creative.  They  are  the  heralds  who  marshal  the 
procession,  not  the  princely  figures  who  walk  in  it. 
They  exhibit  actions  which  they  did  not  perform,  and 
describe  events  in  producing  which  they  had  no  part. 

When,  then,  the  events  themselves  are  before  us, 
the  mere  narrative  of  which  the  student  writes  and  the 

6 


Another  Anniversary. 

library  assists,  our  chief  attention  is  challenged  by 
them.  Contemplating  them,  we  lose  sight,  compara- 
tively, of  the  instruments  which  had  made  their  out- 
line familiar,  forgetting  the  processes  before  the 
vitality  and  the  mass  of  the  facts  to  which  these 
had  brought  us.  It  is  with  us  as  with  the  traveler, 
who  ceases  to  remember  the  ship  which  carried  him 
across  the  seas,  when  he  treads  the  streets  of  the  dis- 
tant town,  watches  its  unfamiliar  manners,  hears  the 
dissonance  of  its  strange  speech,  and  looks  with  a  sur- 
prised delight  on  its  religious  or  civil  architecture. 
So  we,  in  front  of  the  great  events,  the  signal  actions, 
the  mean  or  the  illustrious  characters,  to  which  the 
historical  narrative  has  borne  us,  forget  for  the  time  the 
narrative  itself,  or  only  remember  the  intellectual  grace 
which  moulded  its  lines,  the  strength  of  proof  which 
confirmed  its  conclusions,  the  buoyant  movement  with 
which  it  bore  us  across  intervening  floods  of  time. 

We  stand,  as  a  people,  in  the  presence  of  a  com- 
manding Past,  and  shall  continue  so  to  do  in  succeed- 
ing years  of  our  national  experience.  One  centennial 
anniversary,  dear  to  the  thoughts  of  every  lover  of 
English  eloquence  and  American  liberty,  has  passed 
already ;  and  you  will  pardon  me,  perhaps,  if  I  pause 
upon  that,  because  it  has  suggested  the  theme  on 
which  I  would  offer  some  remarks. 

It  was  just  one  hundred  years  ago,  on  the  twenty- 
second  of  March  last,  that  Edmund  Burke  delivered 
in  the  British  Parliament  that  speech  on  "  Concilia- 

7 


Address. 

tion  with  the  Colonies,"  which,  of  itself,  would  have 
assured  the  fame  of  any  speaker.  The  profoundest 
political  and  legislative  wisdom  was  presented  in  it 
with  perspicuous  clearness,  and  enforced  with  an  elo- 
quence which  Burke  himself  never  surpassed.  In 
eager  and  majestic  utterance,  he  recited  the  circum- 
stances which  had  led  him  to  seek,  with  impassioned 
ardor,  to  promote  the  j-econciliation  of  the  colonies 
to  the  Government  of  Great  Britain  ;  and  to  do  this 
by  repealing  the  acts  of  Parliament  against  vrhich  re- 
sistance had  here  been  aroused,  and  by  adjusting 
future  legislation  on  the  plan  of  getting  an  Americr.n 
revenue,  as  England  had  got  its  American  empire,  by 
securino-  to  the  colonies  the  ancient  and  inestimable 
English  privileges. 

The  speech  is,  of  course,  familiar  to  you  ;  yet  a  rap- 
id indication  of  its  compact  and  coercive  argument 
may  serv^e,  perhaps,  to  revive  it  in  your  thoughts,  as  a 
couplet  sometimes  recalls  a  poem,  as  the  touch  of 
even  an  unskilful  cravon  mav  set  before  us  the  wide 
outreach  of  a  landscape. 

The  circumstance  to  which  he  first  referred,  was  the 
rapid  increase  of  the  colonial  population  ;  an  increase 
so  swift,  and  so  continuing,  that,  in  his  own  words, 
"  state  the  numbers  as  high  as  we  will,  whilst  the  dis- 
pute continues,  the  exaggeration  ends.  .  .  .  Your 
children  do  not  grow  faster  from  infancy  to  manhood, 
than  they  [of  the  colonies]  spread  from  families  to* 
communities,  and  from  villages  to  nations." 


The  Oration  of  Burke. 


The  second  circumstance  which  impressed  his  mind, 
was  the  commerce  of  the  colonies :  "  out  of  all  pro- 
portion, beyond  the  numbers  of  the  people ; "  in  re- 
spect to  which  "  fiction  lags  after  truth ;  invention  is 
unfruitful,  and  imagination  cold  and  baiTcn."  Of  their 
expanding  agriculture,  he  said  :  "  For  some  time  past 
the  Old  World  has  been  fed  from  the  New.  The 
scarcity  which  you  have  felt  \\t)uld  have  been  a  deso- 
lating famine,  if  this  child  of  your  old  age,  with  a  true 
filial  piety,  with  a  Roman  charity,  had  not  put  the  full 
breast  of  its  vouthful  exuberance  to  the  mouth  of  its 
exhausted  parent,"  Of  the  fisheries  of  the  colonies, 
especially  of  the  whale-fishery,  he  spoke  in  words 
whose  fame  is  co-extensive  with  the  English  tongue, 
as  carried  to  an  extent  bevond  that  reached  bv  "  the 
perseverance  of  Holland,  the  activity  of  France,  or  the 
dexterous  and  firm  sagacity  of  English  enterprise ;" 
and  this  by  a  people  "  who  are  still,  as  it  were,  but  in 
the  gristle,  and  not  yet  hardened  into  the  bone  of 
manhood." 

Still  more  important,  however,  before  his  view  than 
either  the  increasing  population  of  the  colonies,  their 
agriculture,  or  their  commerce,  was  the  temper  and 
character  of  the  people  who  composed  them  ;  in  which 
a  love  of  freedom  appeared  to  him  the  predominating 
feature,  distinguishing  the  whole.  The  people  of  the 
colonies  were  descendants  of  Eno^lishmeru  Thev 
were,  therefore,  "  not  only  devoted  to  liberty,  but  to 
libertv  accordino^  to  Enorlish  ideas ; "  and  so  thev  were 


Address. 

fundamentally  opposed,  with  all  the  force  of  immemo- 
rial tradition,  to  that  taxation  without  representation, 
against  which  the  English  lovers  of  freedom  had  al- 
ways fought.  Their  popular  form  of  government, 
through  provincial  assemblies,  contributed  to  foster 
this  attachment  to  liberty.  Their  religion  gave  to  this 
civil  influence  complete  effect.  "  The  people,"  he 
said,  "  are  Protestants ;  and  of  that  kind  which  is  the 
most  adverse  to  all  implicit  submission  of  mind  and 
opinion.  .  .  .  Their  religion  is  a  refinement  on  the 
principle  of  resistance  ;  it  is  the  dissidence  of  dissent, 
and  the  Protestantism  of  the  Protestant  religion." 

If  this  were  not  strictly  true  in  the  southern  colo- 
nies, where  the  Church  of  England  had  wider  estab- 
lishment, yet  the  spirit  of  liberty  was  there  only  higher 
and  haughtier  than  in  others,  because  they  had  a  mul- 
titude of  slaves ;  and  "  where  this  is  the  case,"  he 
affirmed,  "  in  any  part  of  the  world,  those  who  ace 
free,  are  by  far  the  most  proud  and  jealous  of  their  free- 
dom. .  .  .  The  haughtiness  of  domination  com- 
bines with  the  spirit  of  freedom,  fortifies  it,  and  renders 
it  invincible." 

The  education  of  the  colonies,  particularly  the  ex- 
tent to  which  the  study  of  the  law  was  cultivated  among 
them,  contributed  to  their  untractable  spirit.  It  led 
thero,  not,  "  like  more  simple  people,  to  judge  of  an  ill 
principle  in  government  only  by  an  actual  grievance," 
but  to  "  anticipate  the-  evil,  and  judge  of  the  pressure 
of  the  grievance  by  the  badness  of  the  principle." 

JO 


Burke's  Co7iclusion  as  to  the  Colonies, 

The  last  cause  of  the  disobedient  spirit  in  the  colo- 
nies, to  which  he  called  the  attention  of  Parliament, 
was  "  laid  deep  in  the  natural  constitution  of  things  " — 
in  the  remoteness  of  their  situation ;  the  three  thou- 
sand miles  of  ocean  forever  intervening  between  Eng- 
land and  them. 

From  all  these  sources,  the  ever-widening  spirit  of 
liberty  had  grown  up  in  the  colonies,  now  unalter- 
able by  any  contrivance.  "  We  cannot,"  he  said,  "  we 
cannot,  I  fear,  falsify  the  pedigree  of  this  fierce  people, 
and  persuade  them  that  they  are  not  sprung  from  a 
nation  in  Vv^hose  veins  the  blood  of  freedom  circulates. 
.  .  .  I  think  it  is  nearly  as  little  in  our  power  to 
change  their  republican  religion  as  their  free  descent ; 
.  .  .  and  the  education  of  the  Americans  is  also  on 
the  same  unalterable  bottom  with  their  religion ; " 
while,  if  all  these  moral  difficulties  could  be  got 
over,  "the  ocean  remains.  You  cannot  pump  this 
dry.  And  as  long  as  it  continues  in  its  present  bed, 
so  long  all  the  causes  which  weaken  authority  by  dis- 
tance will  continue." 

His  inference  from  all  was,  that  no  way  was  open 
to  the  Government  of  Great  Britain,  but  to  "  com- 
ply with  the  American  spirit  as  necessary ;  or,  if  you 
please,  to  submit  to  it,  as  a  necessary  evil."  "  My  hold 
of  the  colonies,''  he  said,  "is  in  the  close  affection 
which  grows  from  common  names,  from  kindred 
blood,  from  similar  privileges,  and  equal  protection. 
These  are  ties,  which,  though  light  as  air,  are  strong  as 


Address. 

links  of  iron.  Let  the  colonies  always  keep  the 
idea  of  their  civil  rights  associated  with  your 
government ; — they  will  cling  and  grapple  to  you  ;  and 
no  force  under  heaven  will  be  of-  power  to  tear  them 
from  their  allegiance.  .  .  The  more  they  multiply, 
the  more  friends  you  will  have ;  the  more  ardently 
they  love  liberty,  the  more  perfect  will  be  their  obe- 
dience. .  .  It  is  the  spirit  of  the  English  Constitu- 
tion, which,  infused  through  the  mighty  mass,  pervades, 
feeds,  unites,  invigorates,  vivifies  every  part  of  the  em- 
pire, even  down  to  the  minutest  member." 

If  I  were  in  the  least  ambitious,  Ladies  and  Gentle- 
men, to  attract  your  attention  to  any  imagined  skill 
of  my  own  in  presenting  a  subject,  I  should  not  have, 
ventured  thus  to  recall  to  you  the  magnificent  scope, 
the  pervading  power,  the  instinctive  and  harmonious 
splendor,  of  that  memorable  oration  with  which,  a 
hundred  years  ago  last  month,  the  oaken  rafters  of  St. 
Stephen's  rang.  The  perfect  apprehension  of  remote 
facts,  as  when  the  distant  seas  or  summits  are  seen 
by  an  eye  which  needs  no  glass,  through  a  wholly 
transparent  air;  the  vast  comprehension,  which  took 
into  immediate  vision  all  facts  and  principles  related 
to  the  subject,  tracing  at  a  glance  their  inter-relations, 
as  one  traces  the  lines  of  city  streets  from  a  '  coignc 
of  vantage '  above  the  roofs,  and  sees  the  rivers  on 
either  hand  which  kiss  the  piers ;  the  opulence  of 
knowledge  ;  the  precision  and  force  of  argumentation  ; 
the  fervor  of  feeling,  the  energy  of  purpose,  which 

12 


The  Early  Spirit  of  the  Colonies. 

modulated  the  rhetoric  to  its  consenting  grace  and 
majesty ;  the  lucid  and  large  philosophy  of  history ; 
the  imperial  imagination,  vitalizing  all,  and  touching 
it  with  ethereal  lights : — we  look  at  these,  and  almost 
feel  that  eloquence  died  when  the  lips  of  Burke  were 
finally  closed.  One's  impulse  is  to  turn  to  silence ; 
and  not  even  to  offer  his  few  small  coins,  more  paltry 
than  ever  before  the  wealth  of  such  regalia. 

But  I  have  no  desire  at  all,  except  to  stand  with 
you  a  few  moments  at  the  point  of  view  at  w^hich  the 
oration  of  Burke  has  placed  us,  and  to  seek,  with  you, 
to  revive  in  our  thoughts,  with  a  little  more  of  fulness 
in  detail,  the  origin  and  the  growth  of  that  essential 
and  prophesying  spirit  which  he  from  afar  discerned 
in  these  colonies.  For  in  that  lies  the  secret  of  our 
subsequent  history.  It  is  not  certain  that  Burke 
himself,  looking  at  the  matter  through  the  partial 
lights  of  English  narrative,  and  treating  the  subject 
for  immediate  practical  influence  upon  Parliament, 
has  fully  set  forth  either  the  sources  or  the  strength 
of  the  temper  which  he  saw.  But  the  complete 
understanding  of  these  is  most  important  to  whom- 
soever would  read  our  annals. 

The  remark  was  long  ago  made  by  Macchiavelli,* 
that    '  States  are  rarely  formed  or  re-formed  save  by 

*  "  It  must  be  laid  down  as  a  general  rule,  that  it  ver}'-  seldom  or 
never  happens  that  any  government  is  either  well-founded  at  first,  or 
thoroughly  reformed  afterwards,  except  the  plan  be  laid  and  conducted 
by  one  man  only,  who  has  the  sole  power  of  giving  all  orders,  and  mak- 
ing all  laws,  that  are  necessary  for  its  establishment." 

Political  Discourses,  upon  Livy.     Book  I.,  chap.  ix. 

13 


Address. 

one  man.'  Certainly,  however,  it  was  not  so  with 
ours.  The  spirit  shaped  the  body,  here,  according 
to  the  Platonic  plan.  The  people  formed  its  own 
commonwealths,  its  ultimate  Nation;  and  "the  peo- 
ple," says  Bancroft,  looking  back  to  the  peace  of 
1782,  "the  people  was  superior  to  its  institutions, 
possessing  the  vital  force  which  goes  before  organiza- 
tion, and  gives  to  it  strength  and  form."*  This  vital  force, 
therefore,  in  the  pre-Revolutionary  American  people, 
this  inherent  and  energizing  life,  early  developed, 
largely  trained,  acting  at  that  time,  and  acting  ever 
since,  on  our  organized  public  development — this  is 
the  subject  which  I  hope  you  will  accept,  as  deserving 
your  attention,  and  not  unsuited  to  this  occasion. 

At  the  time  when  Burke  saw  the  meaning,  and 
interpreted  the  menace,  of  this  distinctive  American 
spirit,  it  had  all  the  force  which  he  ascribed  to  it; 
and  the  effect  of  it  was  shown,  only  more  speedily,  in 
larger  and  more  energetic  discover}^  than  he  expected. 
It  can  scarcely  be  doubted  that  if  the  counsels  of  his 
wise  statesmanship  had  been  listened  to  by  the  Parlia- 
ment on  vv^hose  unheeding  ears  they  fell,  and  by  the 
Court  which  passionately  repulsed  them,  the  separa- 
tion w^hich  was  inevitable,  between  Enirland  and  the 
colonies,  would  for  a  time  have  been  postponed ;  and 
some  of  us  might  have  been  born,  on  American  shores, 
the  loyal  subjects  of  King  George.  But  those  coun- 
sels  were    not   heeded;     as  those    of    Chatham,  six 

*  History  of  the  United  States,  Vol.  X,  p.  593. 
u 


First  Movements  in  the  Colonies. 

weeks  earlier,  in  the  House  of  Lords,  had  not  been ; 
and  just  four  weeks  after  they  were  uttered,  before 
report  of  them  could  probably  have  reached  this 
country,  on  the  19th  of  April,  at  Lexington  and  at 
Concord,  out  of  the  threatening  murk  of  discontent 
shot  that  fierce  flash  of  armed  collision  between  the 
colonists  and  the  troops  of  Great  Britain,  beyond- 
which  reconciliation  was  impossible  ;  of  which  the 
war,  and  the  following  Independence,  were  the  pre- 
destined sequel. 

Not  quite  a  month  later,  as  you  remember,  on  the 
loth  of  May,  Ticonderoga,  with  Crown  Point,  was 
taken  by  the  provincials ;  and  on  the  very  day  of  the 
capture  —  as  if  to  justify  the  name  "  Carillon,"  given 
by  the  French  to  Ticonderoga,  and  to  make  its  seizure 
the  striking  of  a  chime  of  bells* — the  Continental  Con- 
gress re-assembled  at  Philadelphia,  with  the  proscribed 
John  Hancock  soon  at  its  head,  and  entered  on  the 
exercise  of  its  long  authority ;  an  authority  vague  and 
undefined,  as  such  an  occasional  authority  must  be, 
but  made  legitimate,  and  made  comprehensive,  by  the 
voluntary  submission  of  those  whom  the  Congress 
represented.  Washington  was  appointed  Commander- 
in-Chief,  As  indicative  of  the  tendencies  of  public 
opinion,  before  the  end  of  May,  the  citizens  of  Meck- 
lenburg county,  in  North  Carolina,  by  public  action 

* "  To   Ticonderoga,   the   Indian    '  Meeting   of   Waters,'   they   [the 
French]  gave  a  name  apparently  singular,  '  Carillon,'  a  Chime  of  Bells." 

Egbert  Benson's  Mem. ;  Coll.  of  the  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc,  2d  Series  :  Vol.  2  : 
page  96. 

15 


Address. 

disowned  allegiance  to  the  British  Crown,  and  adopted 
their  declaration  of  Independence;  and  on  the  17th 
of  June,  at  Breed  s  Hill,  the  ability  of  the  provincials 
to  throw  up  redoubts  under  the  cannon-fire  of  a  fleet, 
and  to  make  grass  fences,  with  men  behind  them,  a 
sufficient  barrier  to  repeated  charges  of  British  veterans, 
was  fully  proved ;  and  the  great  drama  of  our  seven 
years'  war  was  finally  opened. 

During  the  years  immediately  before  us,  these 
events,  with  those  which  succeeded,  will  be  fully  re- 
cited ;  and  eloquence  and  poetry,  the  picture  and  the 
bronze,  will  again  make  familiar  what  the  bulk  and 
the  prominence  of  intervening  events  had  partly 
hidden  from  our  view.  The  evacuation  of  Boston  by 
the  British ;  the  bloody  fight  on  the  heights  behind 
Brooklyn,  so  nearly  fatal  to  the  American  cause ;  the 
crossing  of  the  Delaware ;  the  night  attack  on  the 
Hessians  at  Trenton ;  Princeton,  and  Germantown, 
with  the  frightful  winter  at  Valley  Forge ;  the  battles 
of  Monmouth,  Saratoga,  Camden,  King's  Mountain, 
and  Eutaw  Springs;  the  final  surrender  of  Cornwallis, 
at  Yorktown  :  —  all  will  in  their  turn  be  described,  as 
their  centennial  anniversaries  occur.  The  Past  will 
come  back  to  us.  We  shall  hear  again  the  pathetic 
and  heroic  story  which  touched  the  common-place 
life  of  our  childhood  with  romance  and  with  awe. 

And  with  this  will  be  repeated  the  narrative  —  not 
less  impressive  —  of  the  civil  wonders  which  accom- 
panied  the  long  military  struggle;    of  the  separate 

j6 


Mr.  ^ Bancroft'' s  History. 

Constitutions  adopted  by  the  colonies  ;  of  the  gi'eat 
Declaration,  which  raised  those  colonies  into  a 
Nation  ;  of  the  marvellous  State-papers,  which  seemed 
to  Europe  prepared  in  the  woods,  yet  on  which  the 
highest  encomiums  were  pronounced,  by  eminent 
Englishmen,  in  Parliament  itself;  of  the  Articles  of 
Confederation,  which  prepared  the  way  for  an  organic 
Union  ;  of  the  French  alliance,  w^hich  brought  sol- 
diers of  a  monarchy  to  fight  for  a  republic,  and  sent 
back  with  them  a  republican  spirit  too  strong  for  the 
monarchy ;  of  the  money,  so  worthless  that  a  bushel 
of  it  W' ould  hardly  buy  a  pair  of  shoes  ;  of  the  military 
stores,  so  utterly  inadequate  that  barrels  of  sand  had 
to  represent  powder,  to  encourage  the  troops  ;  of  the 
final  adoption,  after  the  war,  of  that  now  venerable 
Constitution  of  government,  which  recent  changes 
have  expanded  and  modified,  but  under  which  the 
nation  has  lived  from  that  day  to  this.  All  these  will 
hereafter  be  recited. 

It  cannot  but  be  regarded  as  a  fortunate  circum- 
stance —  fortunate  for  himself,  and  for  those  to  w^hose 
means  of  historical  study  he  has  made  such  large  and 
brilliant  contributions  —  that  the  concluding  volume 
of  his  History  has  just  been  published  by  Mr.  Bancroft, 
whose  relations  to  this  Society  have  been  so  intimate  ; 
and  that  down  to  the  peace  of  1 782  he  has  completed 
his  elaborate  and  shining  narrative.  The  enthusiasm 
of  youth  has  survived  in  him,  to  animate  and  enhance 
the  acquisitions  of  age ;  and  those  who  read,  in  their 

17 


^ 


Address, 

own  youth,  his  earlier  volumes,  and  admired  alike  their 
strength  and  polish,  will  fejoice  that  his  hand  has  placed 
the  capital  upon  the  tall  and  fluted  shaft.  "  Worthy 
deeds,"  said  Milton,  "are  not  often  destitute  of  worthy 
relators  ;  as  by  a  certain  fate^  great  acts  and  great  elo- 
quence have  most  commonly  gone  hand  in  hand,  equal- 
ling and  honoring  each  other  in  the  same  ages."^ 

It  is,  of  course,  not  my  purpose  to  ask  your  attention 
to  any  of  the  particulars  of  that  remarkable  and  fasci- 
nating history  whose  jutting  outlines  I  have  traced. 
Next  week,  at  Lexington  and  at  Concord,  eloquent 
voices  will  open  the  story.   Others  w^ill  follow,  in  swift 
succession,  till  every  field,  and  each  principal  fact,  has 
found  celebration.     My  office  is  merely  preparatory  to 
theirs.     The  subject  before  me  is  not  picturesque.      It 
hardly  admits  of  any  entertaining  or  graphic  treatment. 
But  it  nevertheless  is  of  primary  importance ;  and  all 
w^ho  follow  will  have  to  assume  what  I  would  exhibit. 
There  was  a  certain  energizing  spirit,  an  impersonal 
but  inherent  and  ubiquitous  temper,  in  the  people  of 
the  colonies,  which  lay  behind  their  wide  and  sudden 
Revolutionary  movement ;  which  pushed  that  move- 
ment to  unforeseen  ends,  and  which  built  a  Republic 
where  the  only  result  sought  at  the  outset  was  relief 
from  a  tax.      Burke  discerned  this,  before  it  had  been 
exhibited  in  the  field,  or  had  done  more  than  give  its 
own  tone  to  debates  and  State-papers.     From   that 
time  on,  to  the  end  of  the  war,  it  was  constantly  de- 

*  Hiat.  Brit^RooklL 


The  Spirit  of  the  people  important. 

clared — brooding  and  brightening  in  the  obscurest 
air,  giving  Congress  its  authority,  giving  conflict  its 
meaning,  inspiring  leaders,  restoring  always  the  shat- 
tered and  the  scanty  ranks.  It  was  this  invulnerable, 
inexpugnable  force,  which  no  calamities  could  ever 
overwhelm,  which  was  sure,  from  the  start,  of  the 
ultimate  victory. 

It  is  this,  and  this  only,  of  which  the  world  ever 
thinks  in  connection  with  the  time,  or  of  which  the 
permanent  history  of  the  country  will  take  much 
account.  The  incidents  are  trivial,  except  for  their  re- 
lation to  this.  It  surprises  us  to  remember  how  small 
were  the  forces,  on  either  side,  in  that  "  valley  of  decis- 
ion" in  which  questions  so  vital  to  us,  and  to  mankind, 
were  submitted  to  the  arbitrament  of  battle  ;  that  Bur- 
goyne's  army  numbered  at  its  surrender  less  than  six 
thousand  English  and  German  troops,  and  had  never 
contained  more  than  eight  thousand,  with  an  uncertain 
contingent  of  Canadians  and  Indians  ;  that  at  Camden, 
Gates  had  but  six  thousand  men,  only  one-fourth  of 
them  Continentals,  and  Cornwallis  but  two  thousand ; 
that  the  force  which  capitulated  at  Yorktown  was  but 
seven  thousand ;  and  that  the  whole  number  of  troops 
sent  from  England  to  this  country,  during  the  en- 
tire continuance  of  the  war,  was  less  than  a  hundred 
and  thirteen  thousand. 

Compare  these  numbers  with  those  of  the  large  and 
disciplined  armies  which  Frederick  II.,  twenty  years 
earlier,   encountered   at    Rossbach   and   at    Leuthen ; 

lO 


Address. 

compare  them  with  those  which,  thirty  years  after, 
swarmed  forth  from  France,  under  Napoleon, — and 
they  are  the  small  dust  of  the  balance.  Compare  them 
with  those  of  France,  on  the  one  hand,  or  of  Germany 
on  the  other,  in  their  tremendous  unfinished  duel,  and 
the  largest  battles  in  which  our  fathers  took  part  seem 
skirmishes  of  outposts.  Nay,  compare  them  with  the 
forces,  from  the  North  and  the  South,  which  fought 
each  other  in  our  late  civil  war,  and  the  Revolutionary 
musters  become  nearly  imperceptible. 

It  was  the  spirit  behind  the  forces,  which  wielded  the 
instruments,  and  compelled  the  events,  which  gave 
these  any  importance  in  history.  Impalpable,  indes- 
tructible, omnipresent  in  activity,  self-perpetuating, 
there  was  this  vital  impersonal  temper,  common  to 
many,  superior  to  all,  which  wrought  and  fought,  from 
first  to  last,  in  the  Congress,  on  the  field.  In  some 
respects  it  was  a  unique  force,  without  precise  parallel 
among  peoples,  breaking  in  unexpectedly  on  the 
courses  of  history.  A  more  or  less  clear  recognition 
of  the  fact  has  given  to  that  time  its  relative  promi- 
nence before  mankind.  A  distinct  apprehension  of  the 
nature  of  the  force  so  victoriously  revealed,  is  necessary 
to  show  how  the  Revolution  became  as  complete  and 
fruitful  as  it  was,  and  how  that  small  American  strug- 
gle, going  on  in  a  country  remote  and  recent,  and 
succeeded  by  events  incomparably  more  striking,  has 
taken  its  place  among  the  significant  and  memorable 

facts  in  the  history  of  the  world. 
20 


The  Colonists  plain  people. 

What  was  that  force,  then  ?  and  whence  did  it 
come  ?  If  I  mistake  not,  it  was  ampler  in  its  sources, 
more  abundant,  more  secular,  and  more  various  in  its 
energy,  than  we  have  often  been  wont  to  conceive. 

There  was  certainly  nothing  of  the  ideal-heroic 
among  the  ante-Revolutionary  people  of  this  country. 
They  did  not  live  for  sentiment,  or  on  it.  They  vreie 
not  doctrinaij-es,  though  they  are  sometimes  so  repre- 
sented ;  and  nothing  could  have  been  further  from  their 
plans  than  to  make  themselves  champions  of  w^hat  did 
not  concern  them,  or  to  go  crusading  for  fanciful  theo- 
ries and  imaginary  prizes.  They  were,  for  the  most 
part,  intelligent,  conscientious,  God-fearing  people — at 
least  those  v^ere  such  who  gave  tone  to  their  com- 
munities, and  the  others  either  accepted  the  impres- 
sion, or  achieved  the  imitation,  of  their  governing 
spirit.  But  they  were  plain,  practical  people,  almost 
wholly  of  the  middle-class,  who  lived,  for  the  most 
part,  by  their  own  labor,  who  were  intent  on  practical 
advantages,  and  who  rejoiced  in  conquering  the  wil- 
derness, in  m.aking  the  marsh  into  a  meadow,  in  suck- 
ing by  their  fisheries  of  the  abundance  of  the  seas,  and 
in  seeing  the  first  houses  of  logs,  with  mud  mortar, 
and  oiled  paper  for  glass  in  the  windows,  giving  place 
to  houses  of  finished  timber,  or  imported  brick,  with 
sometimes  even  mahogany  balustrades. 

When  the  descendants  of  the  settlers  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Piscataqua,  replied  to  a  reproof  of  one  of  their 
ministers,  that  the  design  of  their  fathers  in  coming 

21 


Address. 

thither  had  not  been  simply  to  cultivate  religion,  but 
also  largely  to  trade  and  catch  fish,  they  undoubtedly 
represented  a  spirit  which  had  been  common  along 
the  then  recent  American  coast.*  The  Plymouth 
Colony  was  exceptional  in  its  character.  To  a  large 
extent,  the  later  and  wealthier  Massachusetts  Colony 
was  animated  by  sovereign  religious  considerations; 
and  so  were  those  of  Rhode  Island  and  Connecticut. 
But  they  are  certainly  right  who  affirm  that  even  these 
men,  or  many  of  them,  showed  a  tough  and  persistent 
secular  enterprise  combining  with  their  religious  zeal. 
It  was  indeed  an  indispensable  element  to  the  sound- 
ness of  their  character.  It  kept  them  from  wide  fanat- 
ical excesses.  It  made  them  hardy,  sagacious,  inde- 
fatigable, inflexible  in  their  hold  on  the  fields  and  the 
freedoms  which  they  had  won. 

As  compared  with  our  more  recent  pioneers,  who 
have  peopled  the  territories,  subdued  the  moun- 
tains, and  opened  toward  Asia  the  Golden  Gate,  the 
religious  element  was  certainly  more  prominent  in 
those  who  earliest  came  to  this  country.  But  even 
they  were  far  from  being  blind  to  material  advantages, 
and  far  enough  from  being  willing  to  live  as  idle  en- 
thusiasts. "  Give  me  neither  poverty  nor  riches,"  was 
their  constant  prayer ;  with  an  emphasis  upon  "  poverty." 
They  meant  to  worship  God  according  to  their  con- 
sciences ;  and  woe  be  to  him  who  should  forbid !  But 
they  meant,  also,  to  get  what  of  comfort  and  enjoyment 

*  Adams'  Annals  of  Portsmouth.    Page  94. 

22 


Misconceptioji  of  the  Colonists  easy. 

they  could,  and  of  physical  possession,  from  the  world 
in  which  they  worshipped ;  and  they  felt  themselves 
co-workers  with  God,  when  the  orchard  was  planted, 
and  the  wild  vine  tamed ;  when  the  English  fruits  had 
been  domesticated,  under  the  shadow  of  savage  for- 
ests, and  the  maize  lifted  its  shining  ranks  upon  the 
fields  that  had  been  barren ;  when  the  wheat  and  rye 
were  rooted  in  the  valleys,  and  the  grass  was  made  to 
grov/  upon  the  mountains. 

It  is  easy,  of  course,  to  heighten  the  common,  to 
magnify  the  rare  and  superior  virtues,  of  men  to  whom 
we  owe  so  much.  Time  itself  assists  to  this,  as  it 
makes  the  mosses  and  lichens  grow  on  ancient  walls, 
disguising  with  beauty  the  rent  and  ravage.  It  is 
easy  to  exaggerate  their  religious  enthusiasm,  till  all 
the  other  traits  of  their  character  are  dimmed  by  its 
excessive  brightness.  Our  filial  pride  inclines  us  to 
this  ;  for,  if  we  could,  we  should  love  to  feel,  all  of  us, 
that  we  are  sprung  from  untitled  nobles,  from  saints 
who  needed  no  canonization,  from  men  of  such  heroic 
mould,  and  women  of  such  tender  devoutness,  that  the 
world  elsewhere  was  not  worthy  of  them  ;  that  they 
brought  to  these  coasts  a  wholly  unique  celestial  life, 
through  the  scanty  cabins  which  were  to  it  as  a 
manger,  and  the  quaint  apparel  which  furnished  its 
swaddling-clothes ;  that  airs  Elysian  played  around 
them,  while  they  took  the  wilderness,  as  was  said  of 
the  Lady  Arbella  Johnson,  "on  their  way  to  heaven." 

I  cannot  so  read  their  history.     Certainly,  I  should 

23 


Address. 

be  the  last  in  this  assembly  to  say  any  word — in  what- 
ever  haste,  in  whatever  inadvertence — in  disparage- 
ment of  those  who,  with  a  struggle  that  we  never 
have  paralleled  and  can  scarcely  comprehend,  planted 
firmly  the  European  civilization  upon  these  shores. 
I   remember  the  hardness  which   they  endured,  and 
shame  be  to  me,  if,  out  of  the  careless  luxury  of  our 
time,  I  say  an  unworthy  word  of  those  who  faced  for 
us  the  forest  and  the  frost,  the  Indian  and  the  wolf, 
the  gaunt  famine  and  the  desolating  plague.     I  re- 
member that  half  the   Plymouth   colonists  died   the 
first  winter,  and  that  in  the  spring,  when  the  long- 
waiting  Mayflower  sailed  again  homeward,  not  one  of 
the  fainting  survivors  went  with  her, — and  I  glory  in 
that  unflinching  fortitude  which  has  given  renown  to 
the   sandy  shore  !     Our   vigor   is  flaccid,  our   grasp 
uncertain,  our  stiffest  muscle  is  limp  and  loose,  beside 
the  unyielding  grapple  of  their  tough  wills. 

But  what  I  do  say  is,  that  the  figures  of  even  the 
eminent  among  them  were  not  so  colossal  as  they 
sometimes  appear,  through  the  transfiguring  mists  of 
Time ;  that  of  culture,  as  we  know  it,  they  for  the 
most  part  had  enjoyed  very  little ;  that  even  in  char- 
acter they  were  consciously  far  from  being  perfect. 
They  were  plain  people,  hard-working,  Bible-reading, 
much  in  earnest,  with  a  deep  sense  of  God  in  them, 
and  a  thorough  detestation  of  the  devil  and  his  works ; 
who  had  come  hither  to  get  a  fresh  and  large  oppor- 
tunity for  work  and  life ;  who  were  here  set  in  cir- 
24 


The  Colo7iists  transferrmg  great  forces. 

cumstances  which  gave  stimulus  to  their  energ}%  and 
brought  out  their  pecuHar  and  masterful  forces.  But 
they  were  not,  for  the  most  part,  beyond  their  asso- 
ciates across  the  seas  in  force  or  foresight ;  and  they 
left  behind  them  many  their  peers,  and  some  their 
superiors,  in  the  very  qualities  which  most  impress  us. 
"  Not  many  wise,  not  many  noble,  not  many  mighty," 
— then,  as  aforetime,  that  was  true  of  those  whom  God 
called.  The  common  people,  with  their  pastors  and 
guides,  had  come  to  the  v/oods,  to  labor,  and  pros- 
per, and  hear  God's  word.  And  upon  them  He  put 
the  immense  honor  of  building  here  a  temple  and  a 
citadel,  whose  walls  we  mark,  whose  towers  we  count, 
and  to  which  the  world  has  since  resorted. 

But  it  is,  also,  always  to  be  remembered  that  the 
early  settlers  of  this  country  were  not  of  one  stock 
merely,  but  of  several ;  and  that  all  of  them  came  out 
of  communities  which  had  had  to  face  portentous 
problems,  and  which  were  at  the  time  profoundly 
stirred  by  vast  moral  and  political  forces.  They  were 
themselves  impregnated  with  these  forces.  They 
bore  them  imbedded  in  their  consciousness ;  entering, 
whether  articulately  or  not,  with  a  dominant  force 
into  their  thought,  into  their  life.  They  transported 
to  these  coasts,  by  the  simple  act  of  transferring  their 
life  hither,  a  power  and  a  promise  from  the  greatest 
age  of  European  advancement.  They  could  not  have 
helped  it,  if  they  would.    They  could  more  easily  have 

left  behind  the  speech  which  they  had  learned  in  child- 

25 


Address. 

hood,  than  they  could  have  dropped,  on  their  stormy 
way  across  the  ocean,  the  self-reliance,  the  indomitable 
courage,  the  constructive  energy,  and  the  great  aspira- 
tion, of  which  the  lands  they  left  were  full. 

This,  it  seems  to  me,  is  hardly  recognized  as  clearly 
and  widely  as  it  should  be :  that  the  public  life  of  a 
magnificent  age — a  life  afterward  largely,  for  a  time, 
displaced  in  Europe,  by  succeeding  reactions — was 
brought  to  this  continent,  from  different  lands,  under 
different  languages,  by  those  who  settled  it ;  that  it 
was  the  powerful  and  moulding  initial  force  in  our 
civilization ;  and  that  here  it  survived,  from  that  time 
forward,  shaping  affairs,  erecting  institutions,  and  mak- 
ing the  Nation  what  it  finally  came  to  be. 

They  may  not  themselves  have  been  wholly  aware 
of  what  they  brought.  There  was  nothing  in  the  out- 
ward circumstance  of  their  action  to  make  it  distin- 
guished. They  had  no  golden  or  silver  censers  in 
which  to  transport  the  undecaying  and  costly  flame. 
Thev  brought  it  as  fire  is  sometimes  carried,  by  rough 
hands,  in  hollow  reeds.  But  they  brought  it,  never- 
theless ;  and  here  it  dwelt,  sheltered  and  fed,  till  a 
continent  was  illumined  by  it.  Let  us  think  of  this  a 
little.  Let  some  rapid  suggestions  call  up  to  us  the 
:imes,  the  new  and  unmeasured  energies  of  which 
swept  out  to  this  continent,  when  the  colonists  came  ; 
all  the  forces  of  which  —  political,  social,  and  not 
merely  religious — found  here  their  enlarging  arena. 

At  the  time  of  the  seizure  of  New  Netherland  by 
26 


Elements  of  the  Population. 

the  English,  in  1664,  the  main  elements  of  the  popu- 
lation, afterward  composing  the  thirteen  colonies,  were 
already  on  these  shores.  Subsequent  arrivals  brought 
increase  of  numbers,  except  in  New  England,  where 
the  English  immigration  was  then  at  its  end.  Impor- 
tant colonies,  as  Pennsylvania  and  Georgia,  date  their 
existence  from  a  time  more  recent.  But  the  principal 
nationalities  of  northern  and  north-western  Europe, 
from  which  our  early  population  was  derived,  had 
already  representatives  here ;  and  what  followed  con- 
tributed rather  to  the  increase  than  to  the  chan2:e  of 
that  population.  It  was  said,  you  know,  that  eight- 
een languages  were  spoken  before  then  in  the  thriv- 
ing village  which  Stuyvesant  surrendered,  and  which 
is  now  this  swarming  metropolis ;  *  and  we  certainly 
know  that  Englishmen,  Dutchmen,  Swedes,  Germans, 
French  Huguenots,  Scotch  Presbyterians,  Quakers, 
and  Catholics,  were  at  that  time  upon  the  American 
coast.   X  • 

From  that  point,  then,  it  is  well  to  look  back,  and 
see  what  was  the  governing  spirit,  the  diffused  and 
moulding  moral  life,  which  the  steady  immigration  of 
sixty  years,  back  to  the  date  of  the  building  of  James- 
town, had  been  bringing  hither.  For  these  sixty  years,  in 

*  This  surprising  statement  appears  to  have  been  first  made  as  early 
as  1643,  by  the  Director-General  Kieft,  to  Father  Jogues,  the  Jesuit 
Priest,  escaped  from  the  Iroquois,  who  was  then  his  guest.  It  was 
afterward  repeated  by  Father  Jogues,  in  his  Description  of  New  Nether- 
land. 

Coll.  N.  Y.  Hist.  Soc,  2d  Series.    Vol  3 :  page  215. 

*7 


Address. 

comparison  with  the  hundred  and  ten  which  followed, 
were  like  the  first  twenty-five  years  in  one's  personal  life, 
compared  with  the  fifty  which  succeed.  They  gave  the 
direction,  projected  the  impulse,  prescribed  the  law,  of 
the  subsequent  development ;  and  they,  of  course,  sur- 
pass in  importance  any  other  equal  period,  in  showing 
how  the  nation  came  at  last  to  be  what  it  was.  But 
these  sixty  years,  also,  were  vitally  connected  with  the 
lorty  or  fifty  which  had  gone  before  them  ;  since  in 
those  had  been  born,  and  morally  trained,  the  men  and 
women  vrho  subsequently  came  hither.  Out  of  those 
had  come  the  vivifying  forces  which  the  settlers  at 
Jamestown,  and  they  who  came  later,  transferred  to 
this  continent.  We  shall  not  have  reached  the  top- 
roots  of  our  history,  till  we  have  gone  back  to  their 
beginning. 

Look  back,  then,  from  the  surrender  of  New  Am- 
sterdam, to  the  date  of  the  coronation  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, in  1558 — less  than  fifty  years  before  James- 
town began,  little  more  than  fifty  years  before  Adrian 
Block  built  on  this  island  its  first  small  ship,^  and 
named  it  "  The  Restless," — and  you  have  before  you 

*  This  was  in  1614 ;  but  another  ship  had  been  previously  cdnstnicted 
on  the  coast.  "  Mr.  Cooper,  in  his  Naval  Histor\',  speaks  of  Block's 
yacht  as  '  the  first  decked  vessel  built  within  the  old  United  States.'  But 
the  honor  ot  precedence  in  American  naval  architecture  must  fairly  be 
jielded  to  Popham's  unfortunate  colony  on  the  Kennebec.  The  '  Vir- 
ginia,' of  Sagadahoc,  was  the  first  European-built  vessel  v.'ithin  the 
original  thirteen  States.  The  '  Restless,'  of  Manhattan,  was  thi  pioneer 
craft  of  New  York." 

Brodhead's  Hist,  of  New  York.    Vol.  I.,  page  55.     (Note.) 

23 


A  remarkable  Century. 

the  remarkable  century,  out  of  which  had  broken  the 
settlements  on  these  shores,  at  the  end  of  which  they 
all  had  passed  under  British  supremacy.  That  was  the 
birth-time  of  our  public  life.  From  its  great  spirit, 
from  its  energetic  and  vivid  experience,  fell  a  splendor 
and  a  powder  on  the  embryo  people  which  finally  be- 
came the  American  Nation. 

It  was  a  munificent,  a  heroical  century ;  in  which, 
for  the  first  time,  the  immense  vigor  of  popular  en- 
thusiasm entered  decisively  into  national  development, 
and  forced  acceptance  from  statesmen  and  kings ; 
which  was,  accordingly,  the  boldest  in  plan,  the  widest 
in  work,  the  most  replete  with  constRictive  energy, 
which  up  to  that  time  had  been  known  in  Europe. 
Fruitful  schemes,  strenuous  struggles,  extraordinary- 
genius,  amazing  achievement,  the  decay  of  authority, 
the  swift  advance  of  popular  powder— these  so  crowd 
the  annals  of  it  that  no  brief  narrative  could  give  a 
summary  of  them.  Long  repressed  tendencies  came 
to  sudden  culmination.  Hidden  forces  found  vast 
development.  The  exuberant  and  out-breaking  ener- 
gies of  Christendom  could  no  more  be  restrained 
within  ancient  limitations,  than  the  lightnings,  elabo- 
rated in  hidden  chambers  of  earth  and  sky,  can  be  lock- 
ed in  the  clouds  from  which  they  leap. 

The  invention  of  the  movable  type,  a  hundred  years 

earlier,  at  Harlem  or  at  Maintz,  had  made  books  the 

possession  of  many,  where  manuscripts  had  been  the 

luxury  of  the  few.     Knowledge  was  distributed,  and 

29 


Address. 

thought  was  interchanged,  on  this  new  vehicle,  with  a 
freedom,  to  a  breadth,  before  unknown.  The  found- 
ing of  libraries,  the  enlargement  of  universities,  had 
given  opportunity  for  liberal  studies  ;  and  the  ancient 
Vv^orld  drew  nearer  to  the  modern,  as  the  elegant  letters 
of  Greece  and  Rome  made  the  genius  and  the  action 
again  familiar  with  which  their  times  had  been  illus- 
trious. At  the  same  time,  the  discovery  of  this  conti- 
nent had  expanded  the  globe  to  the  minds  of  Euro- 
peans, and  had  opened  new  areas,  the  more  exciting  be- 
cause undefined,  to  their  enterprise  and  hope.  The 
popular  imagination,  in  the  early  part  of  that  age,  was 
stirred  by  tales  of  sea-faring  adventure  as  it  had  never 
been  by  the  wildest  fiction.  The  air  was  full  of  ro- 
mance and  wonder,  as  savage  forests,  dusky  figures, 
feathered  crests,  ornaments  of  barbaric  gold,  strange 
habitations,  unheard-of  populations,  were  lifted  before 
the  gaze  of  Europe,  along  the  new  Western  horizon. 
Almost  nothing  appeared  incredible.  Grotius  him- 
self, scholar,  jurist,  statesman  as  he  was,  cautious  by 
nature,  and  trained  in  courts,  was  inclined  to  believe 
in  an  arctic  race  whose  heads  grew  beneath  their 
shoulders.  El  Dorado  was  to  Raleigh  as  real  a  local- 
ity as  the  duchy  of  Devon.  Even  Caliban  and  Puck 
seemed  almost  possible  persons,  in  an  age  so  full  of 
astounding  revelations. 

But  neither  the  magical  art  of  printing,  nor  the  dis- 
covery of  the  transatlantic  continent,  had  stirred  with 
such  tumultuous  force  the  mind  of  Christendom  as 


Influence  of  the  Reformation. 

had  the  sudden  Reformation  of  religion,  starting  in 
Germany,  and  swiftly  extending  through  Northern 
Europe.  To  those  who  accepted  it,  this  seemed  a 
revival  of  Divine  revelations.  It  brought  the  Most 
High  to  immediate  personal  operation  upon  them. 
As  in  the  old  prophetic  days,  the  voice  of  speech  came 
echoing  forth,  from  the  amber  brightness  which  was 
as  the  appearance  of  the  bow  in  the  cloud.  The  in- 
stant privilege,  the  constant  obligation,  of  every  man 
to  come  to  God,  by  faith  in  His  Son  ;  the  dignity  of 
that  personal  nature  in  man  for  which  this  Son  of 
God  had  died  ;  the  vastness  of  the  promises,  whose 
immortal  splendors  interpreted  the  cross ;  the  regal 
right  of  every  soul  to  communion,  by  the  word,  with 
the  Spirit  by  whom  that  word  was  given : — these 
broke,  like  a  flash  from  heights  celestial,  not  only  on 
the  devout  and  the  studious,  but  over  the  common  life 
of  nations. 

Before  the  force  so  swiftly  and  supremely  inspired, 
whatever  resisted  it  had  to  give  way.  It  not  only  re- 
leased great  multitudes  of  men  into  instant  inde- 
pendence of  the  ancient  dominant  spiritual  authority. 
It  loosened  the  ligatures,  or  shattered  the  strength,  of 
temporal  tyrannies  ;  and  its  impulses  went  more  wide- 
ly than  its  doctrines.  In  Italy  and  Spain,  as  well  as  in 
England,  in  the  parts  of  Germany  which  retained 
their  ancient  allegiance  to  the  Pontiff",  as  well  as  in 
those  which  had  thrown  this  off",  there  was  an  unwont- 
ed stimulation  in  the  air ;  and  the  forces,  of  learning, 


Address. 

of  logic,  or  of  arms,  which  fought  against  the  Refor- 
mation, were  themselves  more  eager  and  more  effective 
because  of  the  impulse  which  it  had  given. 

Commerce  was  extending,  as  letters  and  liberties 
were  thus  advancing.  Inventions  followed  each  other 
almost  as  swiftly,  with  almost  as  much  of  starthng 
novelty,  as  in  our  own  time  ;  and  the  ever-increasing 
consciousness  of  right,  of  opportunity,  and  of  power, 
the  sense  of  liberation,  the  expectation  of  magnificent 
futures — these  extended  among  the  peoples,  with  a 
rapidity,  in  a  measure,  before  unknown. 

It  was  an  age,  therefore,  not  so  much  of  destruction, 
as  of  paramount  impulse  to  wide  and  bold  enterprise. 
Vast  hopes,  vast  works,  imperial  plans,  were  native  to 
it.  It  was  an  age  of  detonating  strife,  but  of  study, 
too,  and  liberal  thought ;  of  the  noblest  poetry,  the 
most  copious  learning,  a  busy  industry,  a  discursive 
philosophy,  a  sagacious  statesmanship  ;  when  astonish- 
ing discovery  stimulated  afresh  magnificent  enterprise ; 
when  great  actions  crowded  upon  each  other ;  when 
the  world  seemed  to  have  suddenly  turned  plastic,  and 
to  offer  itself  for  man's  rebuilding  ;  when  each  decade 
of  years,  to  borrow  an  energetic  expression  of  Brough- 
am, "  staggered,  under  a  load  of  events  which  had  for- 
merly made  centuries  to  bend." 

So  far  as  the  South  of  Europe  is  concerned,  it  is 

represented  to  us  chiefly,  certainly  most  pleasantly,  by 

the  great  names,  in  literature  or  in  fine  art,  by  which 

it  is   distinguished ;   Tasso,   crowned   at   Rome,  and 
32 


Renowned  Men  of  the  Century. 

Galileo,  condemned  ;*  Cervantes,  Calderon,  Lope  de 
Vega,  in  Spain ;  Tintoretto,  with  his  audacity  of 
genius,  and  the  lightning  of  his  pencil ;  Cagliari,  bet- 
ter known  as  Paul  Veronese,  Guido  Reni,  the  Ca- 
racci ;  Velasquez,  Murillo,  and  Salyator  Rosa.  It  saw 
the  close  of  Titian's  life,  and  of  Michael  Angelo's.  It 
saw  the  completion  of  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's. 

In  Northern  Europe  great  clusters  of  names  also 
shine  on  the  century,  of  men  preeminent  in  science, 
letters,  or  the  fine  arts  ;  Kepler,  Tycho  Brahe  ;  Moliere, 
Racine,  Rochefoucauld,  Pascal ;  Rubens,  Rembrandt, 
Van  Dyke,  Claude  Lorraine.  Edmund  Spenser,  the 
'  Prince  of  Poets/  as  his  monument  describes  him,  fill- 
ed his  career  in  it;  Richard  Hooker,  Philip  Sidney, 
Walter  Raleigh,  Francis  Bacon,  John  Selden,  Isaax: 
Casaubon.  It  bears  upon  its  brow,  as  it  moves  in  the 
great  procession  of  historic  periods,  the  dazzling  dia- 
dem of  the  name  of  Shakespeare.  It  saw  the  youth 
of  Leibnitz,  and  of  Newton.  It  heard  the  music  of  Mil- 
ton's verse.  It  saw  the  entire  life  of  Descartes,  the 
middle  manhood  of  Spinoza.  It  watched  Grotius 
from  his  birth  to  his  burial,  in  the  city  of  Delft. 

*  The  traveler  to  Rome,  visiting  the  church  of  S.  Maria  SOPRA 
Minerva,  will  hardly  fail  to  feel  the  propriety  of  its  name,  if  it  is  recalled 
to  him  that  in  one  of  the  halls  of  the  monastery  attached  to  it,  then  oc- 
cupied by  the  Inquisition,  Galileo  met  his  sentence,  and  pronounced  his 
retraction :  "  I  abjure,  curse,  and  detest,  the  error  and  the  heresy  of  the 
moti(5n  of  the  earth,"  etc.  It  startles  one  to  remember  that  this  was  at 
as  late  a  date  as  June  22,  1633  ;  five  years  before  Harvard  College  was 
founded.  The  Inquisition  itself  has  since  seen  the  truth  of  the  more 
celebrated  words  which  the  aged  philosopher  is  said  to  have  uttered,  in 
an  under  tone,  when  rising  from  his  knees. 

^     ■    ■  ■  .    .   -33 '■  -■■ 


Addf 


'^ess. 


The  telescope  came  to  light  in  it ;  and  brought  to 
men's  view  vast  whirls  of  suns,  as  if  re-creating  for 
them  the  heavens.  The  microscope  was  so  perfected 
as  to  cany  the  sight,  almost  without  exaggeration,  from 
the  infinitely  great  to  the  infinitely  little,  and  to  show 
the  marvels  of  organization  in  creatures  so  minute  that 
a  speck  of  dust  is  a  mountain  beside  them.  The  ther- 
mometer, the  barometer,  the  air-pump,  the  nature  and 
use  of  electricity,  the  circulation  of  the  blood — these 
are  among  its  great  discoveries.  The  mariner's  com- 
pass was  improved  and  illumined  till  it  became  al- 
most a  new  instrument.  The  first  English  newspaper 
had  its  origin  in  this  century.  Logarithms  were  in- 
vented. The  Royal  Exchange  was  opened  in  Lon- 
don. The  Dutch  and  English  East  India  Companies 
were  established.  The  globe  was  explored  on  every 
meridian,  by  the  search  of  its  discovery.  It  gained 
new  luxuries,  as  well  as  new  arts,  and  was  the  first 
century  sweetened  in  Europe  by  the  manufacture  of 
refined  sugar,  or  soothed  and  stimulated  by  tobacco 
and  coffee. 

Things  like  these  are  the  surface  indications  of  pro- 
digious forces  working  beneath ;  like  the  specks  or 
wreaths  of  glittering  spume  which  are  flung  into  the 
air,  when  immense  currents  rush  into  collision.  But 
the  intensity  and  the  breadth  of  these  forces  are  better 
represented  by  the  national  changes  which  the  cen- 
tury witnessed. 

To  look  only  at  the  states  of  Northern  Europe,  it 

34 


Changes  in  Nations, 

saw  the  magnificent  reign  of  Elizabeth,  the  great 
EngHsh  Rebellion,  the  execution  of  Charles  First,  the 
ten  years  of  the  Commonwealth,  the  final  return  of 
Charles  Second.  It  saw  the  Huguenot  struggle  in 
France,  the  stormy  youth  and  the  brilliant  govern- 
ment of  Henry  Fourth,  the  following  reign  of  Louis 
Thirteenth,  the  earlier  successes  of  Louis  Fourteenth  ; 
the  long  ministry  of  Sully,  on  whom  Henry  leaned 
with  such  justified  confidence  ;  the  triumph  of  Riche- 
lieu, who  broke  the  power  of  feudalism  on  the  one 
hand,  of  political  protestantism  on  the  other,  and  who 
"  made  his  royal  master,"  as  Montesquieu  said,  "  the 
second  man  in  France,  but  the  first  in  Europe ;  hum- 
bling the  king,  while  he  exalted  the  monarchy."  It 
saw  the  ministry,  the  marriage,  and  the  death,  of  Car- 
dinal Mazarin. 

The  forty  years'  reign  of  Philip  Second  filled  nearly 
half  of  it.  It  witnessed  the  amazing  revolt  of  the  Neth- 
erlands, their  successful  resistance  of  all  the  Spanish 
fleets  and  forces,  their  final  establishment  of  a  Protestant 
Republic.  It  saw  the  regeneration  of  Sweden  ;  and  it 
included,  in  its  extraordinary  and  comprehensive  annals, 
the  whole  course  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War,  with  the 
sorrow  and  sacrifice  which  that  involved,  the  heroic 
energies  which  it  revealed,  till  it  closed  in  the  welcome 
peace  of  Westphalia. 

Another  century  so  energized  by  great  emergent 
opinions,  so  suddenly  full  of  a  vehement  and  conquer- 
ing public  life,  so  prolific  in  enterprise,  so  swarming 

■  ,35 


Address. 

with  productive  force,  one  must  look  long  to  find. 
When  we  reach  it  in  history  we  are  conscious  of  step- 
ping out  of  the  Past,  into  the  modern  life  of  Christen- 
dom. The  patience,  skill,  inventive  daring,  of  our  civili- 
zation, were  more  vitally  a  part  of  it  than  were  its  longest 
and  fiercest  conflicts.  It  fought,  to  get  more  room  for 
work.  Elemental  rages  darkened  the  heavens.  The 
concussion  of  ethereal  forces  was  constant.  Yet  the 
work  of  construction  went  always  forward,  and  on  the 
broadest  national  scale.  New  liberties  were  asserted 
and  organized.  New  states  came  rounding  into  form. 
The  descendants  of  the  Batavians  made  the  scanty 
lands  which  they  had  rescued  from  the  wash  of  the 
sea,  the  seat  of  a  history  more  majestic  in  its 
elements,  both  of  tragedy  and  of  triumph,  than  the 
Continent  had  seen,  and  the  centre  of  a  commerce 
which  flung  its  tentacles  around  the  globe.  The  Eng- 
lish fleets,  in  which  Catholic  and  Protestant  fought 
together,  scattered  the  Armada,  under  skies  that  seem- 
ed to  conspire  for  their  help,  and  hit,  as  with  ceaseless 
lightning  strokes,  the  ships,  and  coasts,  and  power  of 
Spain ;  while  all  the  time  went  widely  on,  with  only 
indeed  augmented  impulse,  the  labor  of  inventors, 
the  studies  of  scholars,  the  voyages  of  discoverers,  the 
theologian's  discussion,  the  painter's  pencil,  and  the 
statesman's  plan. 

So  full    of  immense  movement  was  the  century, 
so    opulent   in    achievement,   so    mighty  in    impulse, 
that  the  earth  seemed  freshly  alive  beneath  it,  the  skies 
36 


Northern  Europe  full  of  life. 

burnished  with  prophetic  gleams.  The  common  peo- 
ple, for  a  time  at  least,  had  mastered  their  place  in 
politics  and  society ;  and  the  whole  mind  of  Northern 
Europe  was  full  of  an  intense  stimulation.  Education 
was  wide.  Plain  men,  like  Governor  Bradford,  never 
trained  in  any  university,  were  easy  masters  of  five  or 
six  languages.*  Farmers'  sons,  like  Francis  Drake,  be- 
came great  admirals.  The  enterprise  of  the  time  was 
not  reckless  or  vague,  but  was  the  expression  of  this 
abounding,  exuberant  life,  instructed  by  research,  and 
guided  by  courageous  wisdom.  There  was  nothing 
factitious  in  the  force  of  the  century,  as  there  is  noth- 
ing deceptive  in  its  fame.  Alive  in  every  fibre,  with 
an  exultant  and  stimulated  life.  Northern  Europe  sent 
forth  its  freshly-awakened,  world-sweeping  activities,  as 
streams  are  shot  into  sudden  motion  when  the  Easter 
sun  unlocks  the  ice. 

This  was  the  century  out  of  the  midst  of  which  the 
early  settlers  of  this  continent  came  ;  whose  eager 
energies  came  here  with  them.  They  were  not  its 
splendid  representatives.  No  fleets  of  galleons  brought 
them  over.  They  came  in  coarse  clothing,  not  in 
raiment  of  velvet,  or  gilded  armor.     They  attracted 

*  "  He  was  a  person  for  study,  as  well  as  action  ;  and  hence,  notwith- 
standing the  difficulties  through  which  he  passed  in  his  youth,  he  attained 
unto  a  notable  skill  in  languages :  the  Dutch  tongue  was  become  al- 
most as  vernacular  to  him  as  the  English  ;  the  French  tongue  he  could 
also  manage  ;  the  Latin,  and  the  Greek,  he  had  mastered  ;  but  the  He- 
brew he  most  of  all  studied,  'because,'  he  said, '  he  would  see  with  his 
own  eyes  the  ancient  oracles  of  God  in  their  native  beauty.'  " 

Mather's  Magnalia.    Book  2,  Chap.  I.,  §  9. 

•SI 


Address. 

little   attention   at  the  time.     They  only  seemed  to 

themselves  to  be  doing  a  work  which  somehow  had 

fallen  to  their  lot,  and  which  must  be  done  ;  and  that 

the  centmy  which  they  represented  would   be  more 

illustrious   by  reason  of  their  action,  was  certainly  a 

thought  which  never  occurred  to  them.      But  they 

shared  its  life,  if  not  its  renown ;    they  brought  its 

vigor,  if  not  its  wealth.     Their  small  stockades,  at 

Jamestown  and  Plymouth,  at   New  Amsterdam  and 

Fort  Orange,  were  the  points  on  our  coast  w^here  that 

energetic   and  sovereign   century,  then  passing   over 

Europe,  set  up  its  banners.  * 

We  never  shall    understand   them,   or   their  work, 

except  this  be  before  us. 

Recall,  then,  the  England  which  the  colonists  left 
and  represented.  Elizabeth  herself  had  been  dead 
four  years  when  they  landed  at  Jamestown,  and  seven- 
teen years  when  they  settled  at  Plymouth ;  but  the 
image  of  her  imperious  face  was  on  most  of  the  coins 
which  they  brought  hither,  and  the  memories  of  her 
reign  had  a  force  more  vital  than  the  actual  power  of 
her  successor.  The  middle-aged  could  well  remember 
the  camps,  the  watch-fires,  the  universal  excitements, 
of  the  year  of  the  Armada.  The  young  might  have 
read,  upon  broad-sheets,  her  "  Golden  Speech  "  to  her 
last  Parliament.*      The  older  might  have  sailed  with 

*  "  There  seemed  for  a  moment  to  be  some  danger  that  the  long  and 

glorious  reign  of  Elizabeth  would  have  a  shameful  and  disastrous  end.  She, 

however,  with  admirable  judgment  and  temper,  declined  the  contest,  put 

herself  at  the  head  of  the  reforming  party,  redressed  the  grievance, 

38 


The  Reaction  in  England. 

Frobisher  or  Drake,  or  themselves  have  borne  arms 
under  the  famous  admirals  and  captains,  who,  at  her 
inspiration,  had  fought  with  a  triumphant  energy  on 
sea  and  land. 

The  very  temper  which  now  strove  to  displace 
that  earlier  spirit  only  contributed  to  make  it  signal. 
Raleigh  was  beheaded  October  29th,  1618  ;  eleven 
years  after  Jamestown  commenced,  two  years  before 
the  Mayflower's  voyage.  That  was  the  last  passionate 
blow  of  the  vanquished  Spain  at  the  age  of  Elizabeth, 
whose  energy  and  whose  chivalry  he  represented.  It 
showed  the  unsleeping  animosity  of  the  Spaniard  ;  but 
it  also  brought  into  startling  exhibition  the  weakness 
and  wickedness  which  were  now  on  the  throne  from 
which  the  great  daughter  of  Anne  Boleyn  had  lately 
passed  ;  and  the  spatter  of  his  blood  smote  every 
heart,  which  was  loyal  to  the  Past,  with  pain  and  rage. 
Carlyle  has  suggested  that  Oliver  Cromwell  was  per- 
haps at  that  time  living  in  London,  a  student  of  law, 
and  may  have  been  a  spectator  of  the  scene.  Many 
others,  who  were  afterward  in  this  country,  must  have 
seen  the  gallant  and  cultured  man  whose  youthful 
grace  had  attracted  Elizabeth,  and  whose  life  had 
imaged  the  splendor  of  the  age  ;  and  a  sharp  sense  of 

thanked  the  Commons,  in  touching  and  dignified  language,  for  their  ten- 
der care  of  the  general  weal,  brought  back  to  herself  the  hearts  of  the 
people,  and  left  to  her  successors  a  memorable  example  of  the  way  in 
which  it  behooves  a  ruler  to  deal  with  public  movements  which  he  has 
not  the  means  of  resisting." 

Macaulay :  Hist,  of  England.    Vol.  I.,  page  63. 

39 


Address. 

the  Nemesis  in  history  may  well  have  startled  them 
when  the  son  and  successor  of  the  royal  assassin  bowed 
his  reluctant  and  haughty  head  beneath  the  axe,  in 
front  of  Whitehall. 

The  daring  and  inspiring  spirit  which  had  marked 
the  preceding  half-century  was  not  destroyed,  by  the 
murder  of  one  of  its  representatives,  or  by  the  treachery 
of  another.  A  year  after  the  landing  at  Plymouth, 
Thomas  Wentworth,  afterward  known  as  Earl  of 
Strafford,  that  '  great,  brave,  bad  man,'  whom  Mac- 
aulay  has  pictured  with  a  pencil  so  exquisite  and  so 
unrelenting,  declared  in  Parliament,  with  vehement 
emphasis,  that  "  the  liberties,  franchises,  privileges,  and 
jurisdictions  of  Parliament,  are  the  ancient  and  un- 
doubted birthright  and  inheritance  of  the  subjects  of 
England."  That  was  then  a  passionate  conviction  in 
the  House  of  Commons.  Twenty  years  later,  when 
he  who  then  uttered  it  had  been  for  twelve  years  its 
fierce  antagonist,  it  caught  him  in  its  grasp,  and  swept 
him  to  the  scaffold.  The  pre-Revolutionary  struggle 
of  our  fathers  had  its  prophecy  in  that  sentence.  Its 
seminal  principle  involved  their  whole  contest. 

Before  the  Pilgrims  sailed  from  Holland,  he  whom 

Elizabeth,  forty  years  before,  in  the  superb  promise  of 

his  youth,  had  called  her  "  young  Lord  Keeper,"  was 

Chancellor  of  England.      His  "  Novum  Organum  " 

might  have  come  to  our  shores  with   Bradford  and 

Carver ;  his  later  WTitings  with  Winthrop  and  Higgin- 

son.     His  immense  influence  on  human  thought  syn- 
40 


Shakespeare,  and  Milton. 

chronlses  completely  with  the  English  settlements  on 
our  coast.  The  then  new  English  version  of  the 
Scriptures  was  just  in  time  to  gild  with  its  lights,  of 
Hebrew  story  and  Christian  faith,  the  rude  life  on 
savage  shores.  Shakespeare  had  died,  untimely,  in 
1616  ;  and  the  first  collected  edition  of  his  plays  was 
pubhshed  in  the  year  of  the  settlement  of  this  city. 
How  far  the  impulse  and  renown  of  his  genius  had 
preceded  his  death  we  cannot  be  sure  ;  but  the  children 
of  those  who  had  never  read,  who  certainly  had  not 
seen  his  plays  at  the  Blackfriars'  or  the  Globe,  have 
been  debtors  ever  since  to  that  supreme  and  visioned 
mind  which  reanimated  the  past,  interpreted  history, 
and  searched  the  invisible  spirit  of  man  as  if  it  were 
transparent  crystal.  Milton  was  a  lad,  twelve  years 
old,  when  the  Plymouth  colony  began,  having  been 
born,  in  1608,  in  Bread  street,  London,  under  the 
armorial  sign  of  the  "  Spread  Eagle  ; "  and  his  public 
life  was  wholly  accomplished  within  the  period  now 
under  review,  though  it  was  not  till  later  that  the 
"  Paradise  Lost "  was  published  in  London,  and  the 
chequered  and  lofty  life  of  the  poet  was  closed  in  sleep. 
These  names  make  the  age  which  presents  them 
majestic.  But  their  chief  importance  to  us,  at  this 
moment,  is  derived  from  the  fact  that  they  represent 
a  popular  life  which  preceded  themselves,  and  which 
quickened  the  personal  genius  that  surpassed  it.  The 
authors  were  the  fountain-shafts,  through  which  shot 
up,  in  flashing  leap,  the  waters  flowing  from  distant 


41 


Address. 

heights.  With  the  various  beauty,  the  incomDarable 
force,  of  their  differing  minds,  they  gave  expression  to 
impalpable  influences  of  which  the  age  itself  was  full. 

The  same  influences  wrought  in  humbler  men,  who 
could  not  give  them  such  expression.  They  were  the 
vital  inheritance  of  our  fathers.  The  men  of  the  English 
middle-class, — they  were  the  men  from  the  loins  of 
whose  peers,  and  whose  possible  associates,  Raleigh, 
and  Shakespeare,  and  Milton,  had  sprung.  They  could 
not,  many  of  them,  read  the  Latin  of  the  "  De  Aug- 
mentis."  They  might  not  appreciate  the  cosmic  com- 
pleteness of  Shakespeare's  mind,  or  the  marvellous 
beauty  of  Comus  and  L'Allegro.  But  they  incorpor- 
ated, more  than  others,  the  essential  spirit  of  that  pro- 
lific, prophetic  age,  which  had  found  its  voice  in  these 
supreme  writers.  They  had  breathed  from  infancy 
that  invigorating  air  which  was  full  of  discovery,  enter- 
prise, hope,  of  widened  learning,  popular  enthusiasm, 
a  fresh  and  vivid  Christian  faith.  They  had  felt  the 
inrush  of  that  vehement  life  which  for  sixty  years 
had  been  sweeping  over  England  ;  and  the  irrepressible 
temper  of  the  time,  which  gave  birth  to  the  letters, 
impulse  to  the  discovery,  law  to  the  statesmanship, 
life  to  the  religion,  of  the  age  of  Elizabeth,  was  as 
much  a  part  of  them  as  their  bones  and  their  blood. 

They  came,  in  large  part,  because  they  represented 
that  spirit ;  because  it  seemed  to  them  likely  thence- 
forth to  be  less  common  and  governing  in  England  ; 

and  because  they  would  rather  encounter  the  seas,  and 
42 


The  Dutch^  and  Walloons. 

face  the  perils  and  pains  of  the  wilderness,  than  tarry 
in  a  country  where  James  was  king,  and  George 
Villiers  was  minister.  When  Endicott  cut  out  the 
cross  at  Salem  from  the  banner  of  England,  he  ex- 
pressed a  temper  as  old  and  as  stubborn  as  the  fights 
against  Spain.  When  Wadsworth,  fifty  years  later, 
seized  the  charter  of  Connecticut,  and  hid  it  in  the 
Wyllys'  oak,  he  did  precisely  what  the  English  tradi- 
tions of  a  century  earlier  had  enjoined  as  his  duty. 
And  when  the  discerning  Catholics  of  Maryland 
accepted  religious  freedom  in  their  colony,  they  only 
expressed  anew  the  spirit  in  which  their  fathers  had 
fought  the  Armada,  though  the  pontiff  had  blessed  it, 
in  their  loyalty  to  a  Queen  against  whom  he  had  pro- 
claimed a  crusade.  .       . 

It  is  never  to  be  forgotten  that  that  wonderful  century, 
which  saw  at  its  beginning  the  coronation  of-  Eliza- 
beth, and  at  its  end  the  death  of  Cromwell — the  age 
of  Grenville,  Raleigh,  Drake,  of  Bacon,  Shakespeare, 
and  the  manhood  of  Milton — that  was  the  century,  in 
which  the  arts  and  arms  of  England,  its  resolute  tem- 
per, and  its  sagacious  and  liberal  life,  were  solidly 
planted  upon  these  shores. 

The  powerful  element  brought  from  Holland,  by  the 
Dutch  and  the  Walloons,  was  only  the  counterpart  of 
this.  An  eminent  American  has  made  it  familiar,  in 
our  time,  to  all  who  admire  heroism  in  action,  and 
eloquence  in  story. 

Mr.  Motley  has  said  of  William  the  Silent,  that 

43 


Address. 

"  his  efforts  were  constant  to  elevate  the  middle-class  ; 
to  build  up  a  strong  third  party,  which  should  unite 
much  of  the  substantial  wealth  and  intelligence  of  the 
land,  drawing  constantly  from  the  people,  and  deriving 
strength  from  national  enthusiasm, — a  party  which 
should  include  nearly  all  the  political  capacity  of  the 
country ;  and  his  efforts  were  successful."  ^'  "  As  to  the 
grandees,  they  were  mostly  of  those  who  sought  to  '  swim 
between  two  waters,'  according  to  the  Prince's  expres- 
sion." The  boers,  or  laborers,  were  untrained  and  coarse, 
not  the  material  with  which  to  erect  an  enduring  com- 
monwealth ;  and  on  this  stalwart  middle-class,  trained  by 
churches  and  common-schools,  skillful  in  enterprise, 
patient  in  industry,  fervent  in  patriotism,  unconquerable 
in  courage,  the  illustrious  patriot  depended,  under  God, 
for  the  safety  of  his  country. 

Among  the  inhabitants  of  the  province  of  New 
Netherland,  when  it  came  into  the  English  possession, 
were  many  representing  this  class.  The  early  servants 
of  the  West  India  Company  had  been  succeeded  by 
farmers  and  traders.  The  patroons  of  the  vast  and  in- 
definite manors  had,  for  the  most  part,  tarried  at 
home,  and  their  titles  had  largely  been  extinguished. 
The  colonists  then  here, — agriculturists,  mechanics, 
sailors,  dealers — represented  fairly  the  commercial, 
political,  social  spirit,  which  was  prevalent  in  Holland  ; 
and  while  wolves  and  Indians  filled  the  forests,  which 
then  extended  from  Canal  Street  to  Harlem,  the  life 

*  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic.     Vol.  III.,  page  219. 
44 


Attitude  of  the  Netheidands. 

in  the  two  separated  settlements  was  much  the  same 
as  in  the  equal  contemporaneous  villages  of  the  Father- 
land. Maurice — for  whom  the  Hudson  River  had  first 
been  named — was  Stadtholder  of  the  Netherlands, 
when  the  permanent  settlement  was  made  here  ;  and 
the  clouded  lustre  of  his  great  name  was  still  vivid 
with  a  gleam  from  the  past.  Only  two  years  before, 
the  contest  with  Spain  had  re-commenced.  During  the 
preceding  twelve  years'  armistice,  the  United  Nether- 
lands had  passed  through  a  disastrous  interval,  of 
religious  dissension,  ambitious  intrigue,  and  popular 
tumult.  But  that  was  now  ended ;  and  the  first 
stroke  of  the  Spanish  arms,  under  Spinola,  had  revived 
the  magnificent  tradition  of  the  days  when,  as  their 
historian  has  said,  "  the  provinces  were  united  in  one 
great  hatred,  and  one  great  hope."  The  interval  of 
peace  had  not  softened  the  stubborness  of  their  purpose 
to  be  free.  They  were  ready  again  '  to  pass  through 
the  sea  of  blood,  that  they  might  reach  the  promised 
land ; '  and  all  that  was  inspiring  in  the  annals  of 
two  preceding  generations  came  out  to  instant  exhibi- 
tion, as  hidden  pictures  are  drawn  forth  by  fire. 

The  earlier  years  of  Maurice  himself,  when  the  twig 
was  becoming  the  tree — "tandem  fit  surculus  arbor;" 
his  following  victories,  when  the  renowned  Spanish 
commanders  were  smitten  by  him  into  utter  rout,  as 
at  Nieuport  and  at  Turnhout  ;  the  fatal  year  of  the 
murder  of  his  father,  when  the  '  nation  lost  its  guiding- 
star,  and  the  little  children  cried  in  the  streets ; '  the 

45 


Address. 

frightful  "  Spanish  fury "  at  Antwerp  ;  the  siege  of 
Leyden,  and  the  young  university  which  commemo- 
rated the  heroism  of  those  who  had  borne  it ;  thesiesfe 
of  Harlem,  and  all  the  rage  and  agony  of  its  close  : — 
these  things  came  up,  and  multitudes  more — the  whole 
panorama  in  which  these  were  incidents — when  the 
Spaniards  sought,  in  1622,  to  open  the  passage  into 
the  North  by  capturing  the  town  of  Bergen-op-Zoom, 
and  when  Maurice  relieved  it.  The  temper  which 
this  tremendous  experience,  so  intense  and  prolonged, 
had  bred  in  the  Hollanders — the  omnipresent,  inde- 
structible spirit,  not  wholly  revealed  in  any  one  per- 
son, but  partly  in  millions — this  was  again  as  vigorous 
as  ever,  throughout  the  Republic  which  it  had  created, 
when  the  thirty  families  came  to  this  island,  when  the 
two  hundred  persons  were  resident  here,  in  1625. 

Some  of  those  then  here,  more  who  followed,  were 
of  the  same  class,  the  same  occupation  and  habit  of 
life,  with  those  who  had  fought  for  sixty  years,  on  sea 
and  land,  against  the  frenzied  assaults  of  Spain  ;  who, 
under  Heemskirk,  had  smitten  her  fleet  into  utter  de- 
struction, beneath  the  shadow  of  Gibraltar  ;  who  had 
fought  her  ships  on  every  wave,  and  had  blown  up 
their  own  rather  than  let  her  flag  surmount  them  ; 
who  had  more  than  once  opened  the  dykes,  and  wel- 
comed the  sea,  rather  than  yield  to  the  Spanish  pos- 
session the  lands  thus  drowned  ;  who  had  ravaged  the 
coasts,  and  captured  the  colonies,  of  the  haughty  Pe- 
ninsula ;  and  who,  in  the  midst  of  all  this  whirlwind  of 
46 


> 

^ 


Education  in  the  Netheidands. 

near  and  far  battle,  had  been  inaugurating  new  forrm 
of  Government,  cultivating  religion,  advancing  edu- 
cation, developing  the  arts,  draining  the  lakes,  and  or- 
ganizing a  commerce  that  surrounded  the  world. 

When  the  four  Dutch  forts  were  established — at  this 
point,  at  Harlem,  at  Fort  Orange,  on  the  Delaware, 
— this  spirit  was  simply  universal  in  Holland ;  and 
those  who  came  hither  could  not  but  bring  it,  unless 
they  had  dropped  their  identity  on  the  way.  They 
came  for  trade.  They  came  to  purchase  lands  by 
labor ;  to  get  what  they  could  from  the  virgin  soil, 
and  send  peltries  and  timber  back  to  Holland.  But 
they  brought  the  patience,  the  enterprise  and  the  cour- 
age, the  indomitable  spirit,  and  the  hatred  of  tyranny, 
into  which  they  had  been  born,  into  which  their  na- 
tion had  been  baptized  with  blood. 

Education  came  with  them.;  the  free  schools,  in 
which  Holland  had  led  the  van  of  the  world,  being 
early  transplanted  to  these  shores;  a  Latin  school  be- 
ing established  here  in  1659,  to  which  scholars  were 
sent  from  distant  settlements.  *  An  energetic 
Christian  faith  came  with  them,  with  its  Bibles,  its 
ministers,  its  interpreting  books.  Four  years  before, 
Grotius,  imprisoned  in  the  castle  of  Louvestein,  had 

*  "  It  is  very  pleasant  to  reflect  that  the  New  England  pilgririis,  durin;:; 
their  residence  in  the  glorious  country  of  your  ancestry,  found  already 
established  there  a  system  of  schools  which  John  of  Nassau,  eldest 
brother  of  William  the  Silent,  had  recommended  in  these  words :  '  You 
must  urge  upon  the  States  General  that  they  should  establish  free  schools, 
where  children  of  quality,  as  well  as  of  poor  families,  for  a  very  small 
sum,  could  be  well  and  Christianly  educated  and  brought  up.     This 

47 


Address. 

written  his  notes  upon  the  Scriptures,  and  that  treatise 
on  the  Truth  of  the  Christian  Religion,  which,  within 
the  same  century,  was  translated  from  the  original 
Dutch  into  Latin,  English,  French,  Flemish,  German, 
Swedish,  Persian,  Arabic,  the  language  of  Malacca,  and 
modern  Greek.  He  had  written  it,  he  says,  for 
the  instruction  of  sailors ;  that  they  might  read  it  in 
the  leisure  of  the  voyage,  as  he  had  written  it  in  the 
leisure  of  confinement,  and  might  carry  the  impression 
of  that  Christianity  whose  divinity  it  affirmed,  around 
the  globe.  Copies  of  it  may  easily  have  come  hither 
in  the  vessels  of  the  nation  which  had  no  forests,  but 
which  owned  more  ships  than  all  Europe  beside. 

The  political  life  of  the  Hollanders  had  come,  as 
well  as  their  commercial  spirit,  and  their  decisive  re- 
ligious faith.  They  loved  the  liberty  for  which  they 
and  their  fathers  had  tenaciously  fought.  They  saw 
its  utilities,  and  understood  its  conditions  ;  and  if  you 
recall  the  motto  of  the  Provinces,  in  their  earlier  strug- 
gle— "  Concordia,  res  parvoe  crescunt ;  Discordia, 
maximoe  dilabunttir  " — and  if  you  add  a  pregnant  sen- 
tence from  their  Declaration  of  Independence,  made  in 
July,  1 581,  I  think  you  will  have  some  fair  impression 
of  the   influences  which   afterward   wrought  in  this 

would  be  the  greatest  and  most  useful  work  you  could  ever  accomplish, 
for  God  and  Christianity,  and  for  the  Netherlands  themselves.'  .  .  . 
This  was  the  feeling  about  popular  education  in  the  Netherlands,  during 
the  1 6th  century." 

Mr.  Motley's  Letter  to  St.  Nicholas  Society;  quoted  in  Address. of 
Hon.  J.  W.  Beekman,  1869,  pp.  30,  31. 
48 


Declaration  of  Indepe'iidcnce, 

land,  transported  hither  by  those  colonists.  "When 
the  Prince/'  says  that  Declaration,  ^'  does  not  fulfil  his 
duty  as  protector,  when  he  oppresses  his  subjects,  des- 
troys their  ancient  liberties,  and  treats  them  as  slaves, 
he  is  to  be  considered  not  a  Prince,  but  a  Tyrant.  As 
such,  the  Estates  of  the  land  may  lawfully  and  reason- 
ably depose  him,  and  elect  another  in  his  place."*  They 
did  not  elect  another  to  the  place  ;  but,  renouncing 
their  allegiance  to  Philip,  as  their  children  did  after- 
ward to  George  Third,  they  founded  a  Republic,  which 
lasted  on  those  oozy  plains  two  hundred  years. 

The  very  temper  which  afterward  spoke  in  the  pub- 
lic documents  issued  from  Philadelphia,  had  been 
uttered  in  Holland  two  centuries  earlier ;  and  they 
who  came  hither  from  that  land  of  dykes,  storks,  and 
windmills,  had  brought  it  as  part  of  their  endowment. 
No  master-pieces  came  with  them,  of  Rubens  or  Rem- 
brandt, whose  genius  flourished  in  the  same  century, 
under  the  skies  lurid  with  battle,  and  on  the  soil  fattened 
with  blood.  No  wealth  came  with  them,  like  thcit 
which  already  was  making  Amsterdam — ■'  the  Venice 
of  the  North  " — one  of  the  richest  towns  in  Europe. 
They  built  a  stone  chapel,  in  1642! ;  but  they  could  not 
reproduce  on  these  shores  a  single  one  of  the  scores  of 
churches,  stately  and  ancient,  which  they  had  left,,  nor 

*  Rise  of  Dutch  Repablic-     Vol.  III.,  page  509. 

t  "  A  contract  was  made  with  John  and  Richard  Ogden,  of  Stamford, 
for  the  mason-work  of  a  stone  church,  seventy-two  feet  long,  fifty  wide, 
and  sixteen  high,  at  a  cost  of  twenty-five  hundred  guilders,  and  a  gratuity 
of  one  hundred  more  if  the  work.should  be  satisfactory.     The  walls  were 

49 


Address. 

any  of  those  superb  civic  palaces  in  which  the  Nether- 
land  cities  were  rich.  But  amid  whatever  straitness  of 
poverty,  amid  whatever  simplicity  of  manners,  how- 
ever unconscious  of  it  themselves,  they  brought  the 
immanent  moral  life  which  had  made  the  morasses  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Rhine  the  centre  of  a  traffic  more 
wide  and  lucrative,  the  scene  of  a  history  more  majes- 
tic, than  Europe  before  had  ever  seen,  and  the  seat  of 
the  first  enlightened  Republic  on  all  the  circuit  of  its 
maritime  coast. 

To  these  two  elements,  the  English  and  the  Dutch, 
was  added  a  vivid  and  graceful  force  by  those  who  came 
from  the  fruitful  Protestant  provinces  of  France.  It  is 
sometimes  forgotten  that  the  Huguenots  constituted 
the  larger  and  wealthier  part  of  the  population  of  New 
Amsterdam,  after  the  Dutch  ;  so  that  La  Montaigne 
had  been  in  a  measure  associated  with  Kieft  in  the  gov- 
ernment here,  as  early  as  1638  ;  so  that  public  docu- 
ments^ before  1 664,  were  ordered  to  be  printed  in  the 
French  language,  as  well  as  in  the  Dutch.  They 
brought  with  them  industry,  arts,  refinement  of  letters, 
as  well  as  the  faithful  and  fervent  spirit  which  had 
been  infused  into  them  in  the  chamb7'es  ardeittes  of 
their  long  persecutions. 

They  were,  probably,  more  generally  a  cultivated 
class  than  were  the  colonists  from  either  England  or 

s.oon  built  i  and  the  roof  was  raised,  and  covered  b^^  Eng^lish  carpenters 
with  oak  shingles,  which,  by  exposure  to  the  weather,  sooa  '  looked  like 
sl:ite.'  " 

Brodhead's  Hist,  of  New  York.    Vol.  I.,  pp.  33.6-7- 
50 


Huguenot  movement  in  France. 

Holland.  The  Huguenot  movement  had  begun  in 
France,  not  among  the  poorer  people,  but  in  the  capi- 
tal, and  in  the  university.  The  revival  of  letters  had 
given  it  primary  impulse.  It  was  scholastic,  as  well 
as  devout,  and  so  was  fitly  signaled  and  served  by  the 
most  philosophical  system  of  theology  elaborated  in 
Europe.  Its  ministers  v^T'ere  among  the  most  learned 
and  eloquent  in  that  country  and  century  of  eloquent 
preachers.  It  had  counted  distinguished  nobles  in  its 
ranks ;  Conde,  and  Coligni,  among  its  leaders.  Mar- 
guerite, Queen  of  Navarre,  had  been  in  her  time  the 
centre  of  it.  It  was  intimately  connected  with  the 
high  politics  of  the  realm.  It  had  control  of  abundant 
wealth.  The  commerce  of  the  kingdom,  and  its  finest 
manufactures,  were  largely  in  the  hands  of  those  who 
composed  the  eight  hundred  Huguenot  churches  found 
in  France  in  the  early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  families  of  this  descent  who  were  early  in  New 
York — some  of  them  as  early  as  1625 — and  who  were 
afterward  in  Massachusetts,  Rhode  Island,  Virginia, 
South  Carolina,  brought  with  them  thus  an  ancestral 
influence  of  education,  refinement,  and  skillful  enter- 
prise, as  well  as  of  religious  fidelity.  The  French  vivacity 
blended  in  them  with  a  quick  and  careful  sense  of  duty. 
They  brought  new  arts,  and  graceful  industries,  a  cer- 
tain chivairic  and  cultivated  tone;  while  the  right  to 
freedom,  in  the  v/orship  of  God,  and  in  the  conduct  of 
civil  affairs,  was  as  dear  to  them  as  to  any  of  those  whose 

fortunes  they  shared.    This  spirit  had  compelled  respect 

51 


ii«*#^ 


Address. 

in  the  land  which  they  left,  from  those  who  hated  it 
most  intensely.  For  nearly  ninety  years  it  had  made  it 
indispensable  to  maintain  there  the  edict  which  secured 
to  them  religious  rights.  When  that  was  repealed, 
with  the  frightful  dragonnades  which  met  such  ghastly 
retribution  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  a  hundred  years  after, 
half-a-million  of  the  citizens  of  France  pushed  across 
its  guarded  frontiers  into  voluntary  exile,  while  the 
fiery  spirit  of  those  who  remained  blazed  forth  in  the 
war  of  the  Camisards,  unextinguished  among  the  Cev- 
ennes  for  twenty  years. 

Such  an  element  of  population  was  powerful,  here, 
beyond  its  numbers.  Its  trained  vitality  made  it  effi- 
cient. It  is  a  familiar  fact  that  of  the  seven  Presidents 
of  the  Continental  Congress,  three  were  of  this  Hugue- 
not lineage  :  Boudinot,  Laurens,  and  John  Jay.  Of 
the  four  commissioners  who  signed  the  provisional 
treaty  at  Paris,  which  assured  our  independence,  two 
were  of  the  same  number  :  Laurens,  and  Jay.  Faneuil, 
whose  hall  in  Boston  has  been  for  more  than  a  hundred 
years  the  rallying-place  of  patriotic  enthusiasm,  was  the 
son  of  a  Huguenot.  Marion,  the  swamp-fox  of  Caro- 
lina, was  another;  Horry,  another;  Huger,  another. 
It  was  a  Huguenot  voice,  that  of  Duche,  which  open- 
ed with  prayer  the  Continental  Congress.  It  was  a 
Huguenot  hand;  that  of  John  Laurens,  which  drew  the 
articles  of  capitulation  at  Yorktown.  Between  these 
two  terminal  acts,  the  brilliant  and  faithful  bravery  of 
the  soldier  had  found  wider  imitation,  among  those  of 


The  Swedish  Emigration. 

his  lineage,  than  had  the  cowardly  weakness  of  the 
preacher;  and  two  of  those,  who  thirty  years  after, 
in  1 8 14,  signed  the  treaty  of  peace  at  Ghent,  were  still 
of  this  remarkable  stock — James  Bayard,  and  Albert 
Gallatin. 

Whenever  the  history  of  those  who  came  hither 
from  La  Rochelle,  and  the  banks  of  the  Garonne,  is 
fully  written,  the  value  and  the  vigor  of  the  force  which 
they  imparted  to  the  early  American  public  life  will 
need  no  demonstration. 

The  Swedes  and  Germans,  who  also  were  here,  though 
in  smaller  numbers,  represented  the  same  essential  tem- 
per, and  were  in  radical  harmony  of  spirit  with  those 
by  whose  side  they  found  their  place.  Gustavus  Vasa 
had  given  to  Sweden  comparative  order,  and  initial 
prosperity;  leaving  it,  at  his  death,  with  various  indus- 
tries, a  considerable  trade,  and  important  institutions 
of  education  and  religion.  Gustavus  Adolphus  gave 
to  the  country  thus  partially  regenerated  an  eminence 
as  signal  as  it  was  brief  in  European  affairs.  A  typi- 
cal Northman,  with  his  fair  skin,  clear  gray  eyes,  and 
the  golden  hair  which  crowned  his  gigantic  stature,  he 
broke  upon  Germany  in  the  midst  of  the  agony  of 
its  Thirty  Years'  War,  beat  back  the  imperial  ban- 
ners from  their  near  approach  to  the  German  Ocean, 
and,  in  two  years  of  rapid  victory,  turned  the  entire 
current  of  the  strife.  He  swept  fortresses  into  his 
grasp,  as  the  reaper  binds  his  sheaves.  The  armies  of 
Tilly  were  pulverized  before  him.    He  entered  Munich 


Address. 

in  triumph;  Nuremberg  and  Naumburg  amid  a  wel- 
come that  frightened  him,  it  was  so  much  like  worship. 
And  when  he  died,  accidently  killed  in  the  fog  at 
Liitzen,  in  1632,  he  left  the  most  signal  example  in 
modern  times  of  heroic  design,  of  far-sighted  audacity, 
of  the  conquering  force  which  lies  in  faith. 

When  he  left  Sweden  he  said  to  his  chancellor: 
"  Henceforth  there  remains  for  me  no  rest,  except  the 
eternal ; "  and  it  was  true.  But,  before  he  left,  he  had 
not  only  founded  a  university  at  home,  and  given 
large  impulse  to  industry  and  to  commerce,  but  had 
chartered  a  colony  for  this  country,  with  liberal  pro- 
vision, and  an  unbounded  faith  and  hope.  After  his 
death,  the  great  minister,  Oxenstiern — most  prescient 
and  masterful  of  the  statesmen  of  the  time — furthered 
the  colony,  and  would  have  built  it  into  greatness,  but 
for  the  subsequent  decline  of  the  kingdom,  under  the 
eccentric  and  self-willed  Christina.  Then  it  was  ab- 
sorbed, as  you  know,  by  the  Dutch.  But  so  far  as  it 
contributed,  as  to  some  extent  it  did,  to  the  early 
civilized  life  on  these  shores,  it  simply  augmented  the 
previous  forces,  of  personal  energy,  public  education, 
constructive  skill,  and  a  free  faith,  for  which  the  woods 
had  here  retired  to  make  room ;  and  the  fact  that  it 
was  planned  by  him  whose  flashing  fame  filled 
Europe  with  amaze,  connects  it  with  heroic  memories, 
and  casts  a  certain  reflected  splendor  upon  our  early 
popular  life. 

The  Germans,  who  speedily  followed  the  Swedes, 
54 


The  German  Emigration. 


^> 


though  their  large  immigration  was  later  in  beginning, 
were  of  the  same  spirit.  The  war,  which  had  covered 
a  whole  generation,  in  which  three-fourths  of  the 
people  had  perished,  and  three-fourths  of  the  houses 
had  been  destroyed, — which  had  given,  as  Archbishop 
TrencJi  points  out,  the  new  word  "  plunder  "  to  the 
English  language,*  and  which  had  been  marked  by 
atrocities  so  awful  that  history  shudders  to  recite  them, 
— had  not,  after  all,  exterminated  the  temper  at  which 
it  was  aimed.  It  had  given,  as  Trench  has  also 
observed,  the  largest  contribution  of  any  period  to 
the  Protestant  hymn-book  of  Germany.  Those  who 
survived  it,  while  fiercer  than  ever  ao-ainst  the  tvran- 
nies  which  they  had  fought,  were  more  eager  than 
ever  to  replace  the  prosperities  which  the  war  had 
destroyed.  The  wilderness  around  them,  which  man 
had  made,  was  less  inviting  than  the  wilderness  beyond 
seas,  whicbi  God  had  left  for  man  to  conquer.  So 
they  came  hither;  bringing  with  them  the  courage, 
the  purpose,  and  the  hope,  which  all  the  fire  that  ran 
along  the  ground,  and  the  iron  hail  that  had  broken 
the  branches  of  every  tree,  had  only  burned  and 
beaten  deeper  into  their  minds. 

They  came  for  expanded  opportunity ;  for  liberty  of 
development,  and  the  chance  of  a  more  rewarding 

*  "  This  War  has  left  a  very  characteristic  deposite  in  our  languag-e, 
in  the  word  '  plunder,'  which  first  appeared  in  English  about  the  year 
1642-3,  having-  heca  brought  hither  from  Germany  by  some  of  the  many 
Scotch  and  English  who  had  served  therein  ;  for  so  Fuller  assures  us." 

Lect.  on  "  Social  Aspects  of  the  Thirty  Years*  War." 


Address. 

work.  Wherever  they  touched  the  American  coast 
they  set  the  seeds  of  that  new  civihzation  which  had 
found  in  Germany  its  early  incentives,  and  for  which 
they  and  their  fathers  had  fought,  through  a  strife 
without  precedent  in  severity  and  in  length. 

The  same  was  true  of  the  Scotch  and  Scotch-Irish, 
who  came  in  rapidly  increasing  numbers  after  the 
close  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  Earl  of  Stir- 
ling had  received,  by  royal  charter,  as  early  as  162 1,  a 
grant  of  the  territory  still  known  to  the  world  as 
"  Nova  Scotia."  and  had  subsequently  sent  some  colo- 
nists to  its  shores  ;  but  the  small  settlement  soon  disap- 
peared, and  those  who  afterward  emigrated  from 
Scotland,  for  many  years,  were  inclined  to  seek 
homes  in  the  north  of  Ireland,  rather  than  on  these 
distant  coasts.  The  comparatively  few  families  from 
the  lowland  shires,  who  had  come  hither  before 
1664,  had  mingled  inseparably  with  the  English  emi- 
grants, whom  they  closely  resembled,  and  are  scarcely 
to  be  discriminated  from  them.* 

The  four  or  five  hundred  Scotch  prisoners  whom 
Cromwell  sent  to  Boston,  in  165 1,  after  the  battles  of 
Dunbar  and  Worcester,  were,  of  course,  discontented 
in  their  involuntary  exile,  and  appear  to  have  left  no 

*  "  The  population  of  Scotland  (1603),  with  the  exception  of  the 
Celtic  tribes  which  were  thinly  scattered  over  the  Hebrides,  and  over 
the  mountainous  parts  of  the  northern  shires,  was  of  the  same  blood 
with  vhe  population  of  England,  and  spoke  a  tongue  which  did  not  differ 
from  the  purest  English  more  than  the  dialects  of  Somersetshire  and 
Lancashire  differed  from  each  other." 

Macaulay,  History  of  England,  vol  i,  page  65. 
56 


The  Scotch-Irish  Emigration, 

permanent  impression  on  the  unfolding  life  of  the 
colonies.  When  Robert  Barclay,  of  Ury,  was  gov- 
ernor of  New  Jersey,  in  1683,  he  secured  the  emigra- 
tion of  numbers  of  his  countrymen  to  that  attractive 
and  fertile  province,  though,  it  is  said,  "  with  some 
difficulty  and  importunity.  For,  although  the  great 
bulk  of  the  nation  was  suffering  the  rigors  of  tyranny, 
for  their  resistance  to  the  establishment  of  prelacy,  they 
were  reluctant  to  seek  relief  in  exile  from  their 
native  land."* 

But  when  the  hundred  and  twenty  families  came, 
in  1 719,  to  Boston,  Portland,  and  elsewhere,  the  an- 
cestors of  whom,  a  century  before,  had  emigrated  from 
Argyleshire  to  Londonderry  and  Antrim  in  the  north 
of  Ireland,  and  by  part  of  whom  Londonderry,  in  New 
Hampshire,  was  speedily  settled, — and  when  others 
followed,  as  to  Georgia  in  1 736,  to  North  Carolina  in 
1746,  to  South  Carolina  in  1763, — ^they  came  to  stay. 
They  changed  their  skies,  but  not  their  minds.  They 
brought  the  exact  and  stern  fidelity  to  religious  con- 
viction, the  national  pride,  the  hatred  of  tyranny,  the 
frugal,  hardy,  courageous  temper  which  were  to  them 
an  ancestral  inheritance.  Their  strong  idiosyncrasy 
maintained  itself  stubbornly,  but  their  practical  spirit 
was  essentially  in  harmony  with  that  of  the  colonists 
who  had  preceded  them ;  and  when  the  hour  of  sum- 
mons came,  no  voices  were  earlier  or  more  emphatic 
for  dissolving  all  connection  with  Great  Britain  than 

*  Gordon's  History  of  New  Jersey,  chap.  IV. 

57 


li 


Address. 

were  those  of  the  men  whose  ancestors,  in  1638,  had 
eagerly  signed  the  "  National  Covenant"  in  the  Grey- 
friars'  church-yard,  or  forty  years  afterward  had  faced 
Claverhouse  and  his  dragoons  at  Loudon-hill,  or 
Monmouth  and  his  troops  at  Both  well-bridge. 

So,  also,  the  Bohemian  protestants,  who  were  here 
in  1656;  the  Waldenses,  who  were  on  Staten  Island 
and  elsewhere  in  the  same  year ;  the  German  quakers, 
by  whom  Germantown,  in  Pennsylvania,  was  settled, 
in  1684  I  the  three  thousand  Germans,  sent  out  to  the 
Hudson  River  in  1710,  and  who  afterward  established 
their  prosperous  homes  at  Schoharie,  and  along  the 
inviting  Mohawk  meadows  ;  the  Salzburg  exiles,  who 
had  crossed  Europe  from  Augsburg  "  singing  psalms," 
and  who  finally  found  a  home  in  Georgia,  in  1734 : — 
all  were  essentially  similar  in  spirit,  industrious,  order- 
ly, devout,  faithful  to  their  religion,  with  a  resolute 
purpose  to  live  and  work  in  unhindered  freedom. 
Each  small  migration  added  its  increment  to  the 
swelling  force  of  the  various  but  sympathetic  popula- 
tion of  the  colonies.  Each  element  had  its  separate 
value,  its  proper  strength  ;  and  all  were  ready,  when 
the  final  fires  of  war  broke  forth,  to  combine  with  each 
other,  as  the  many  metals,  fused  together  and  inti- 
mately commingling,  were  wrought  into  one  magnifi- 
cent amalgam,  in  the  famous  and  precious  Corinthian 
brass. 

Even  the  rough  and  rapid  outline  of  this  fragment- 
ary review  illustrates  the  extent  to  which  the  century 
58 


The  Nation  commenced. 

passing  so  signally  over  Europe  impressed  its  charac- 
ter on  this  continent.  Twenty-five  years  after  New 
Amsterdam  had  been  submitted  to  the  English,  at 
least  two  hundred  thousand  Europeans  are  computed 
to  have  had  their  home  in  this  country,  representing, 
for  the  most  part,  the  several  peoples  which  I  have 
named.  The  future  Nation  was  then  fully  commenced. 
It  had  only  thenceforth  to  work,  and  grow.  It  was 
formed  of  plain  people.  Its  wealth  vv^as  small,  and  its 
culture  not  great.  It  had  been  hardly  noticed,  at  first, 
amid  the  swift  changes  of  states  and  dynasties  with 
which  Europe  was  dazzled.  But  the  forces  which  it 
contained  represented  an  illustrious  ancestry.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  the  most  energetic  life  of  the 
v/orld,  up  to  that  era,  was  reproduced  in  it.  We  have 
thought  of  it,  too  commonly,  as  composed  of  men  who 
had  simply  come  here  in  zeal  for  an  opinion,  or  to 
escape  the  fierce  inquest  of  tyranny.  It  was  a  broader 
temper  which  brought  them,  an  ampler  purpose 
which  they  came  to  serve.  The  push  of  a  century  was 
behind  them  ;  eager,  aggressive,  sweeping  out  to  new 
conquests  on  unknown  coasts.  It  had  seen  such 
changes  in  Northern  Europe  as  only  its  v&hement 
energy  could  have  wrought ;  and  now,  with  seemingly 
careless  hand,  using  the  impulse  of  various  motives,  it 
had  flung  into  space  a  separate  people,  infused  with  its 
temper,  alive  with  its  force. 

In  its  constituent  moral  life,  that  people  was  one, 
though  gradually  formed,  and  drawn  from  regions  so 

59 


Address. 

remote.  It  was  fearless,  reflective,  energetic,  construc- 
tive, by  its  birthright ;  at  once  industrious  and  martial ; 
intensely  practical,  politically  active,  religiously  free. 
There  was,  almost,  a  monotony  o^  force  in  it.  It 
accepted  no  hereditary  leaders,  and  kept  those  whom 
it  elected  within  careful  limitations.  It  gave  small 
promise  of  esthetic  sensibility,  with  the  dainty  touch 
of  artistic  taste ;  but  it  showed  from  the  outset  a  swift 
and  far-sighted  common-sense.  It  was  vital  with  ex- 
pectation ;  having  the  strongest  ancestral  attachments, 
yet  attracted  by  the  Future  more  than  by  the  Past, 
and  always  looking  to  new  success  and  larger  work. 
It  was  hospitable,  of  course,  to  all  new  comers,  giving 
reception  in  New  England,  as  well  as  here,  to  even 
the  Jesuit  and  his  mass;  *  but  it  absorbed  only  what 
harmonized  with  it,  was  indifferent  to  the  rest.  It 
was  sensible  of  God,  and  His  providence  over  it ;  but 
entirely  aware  of  the  value  of  possessions,  and  pro- 
foundly resolved  to  have  the  power  which  they  impart. 
It  was  the  heir  to  a  great  Past.  It  had  before  it  the 
perilous  uncertainties  of  an  obscure  Future.  But  any 
philosopher,  considering  it  at  that  point,  with  a  mind 
as  intent  and  reflective  as  Burke's,  would  have  said,  I 
think,  without  hesitation,  that  its  Future  must  respond 
to  the  long  preparation  ;  that  the  times  before  it  must 
match  the  times  out  of  which  it  had  come,  and  take 
impress  from  the  lands  whose  tongues  and  temper  it 
combined.     If  that    strong  stock,   selected   from   so 

*  See  Parkman's  "Jesuits  of  North  America,"  pp.  322-327. 
60 


The   Traifmtg  of  the  Nation. 

many  peoples,  and  transferred  to  this  continent  at 
that  critical  time,  was  not  destined  thenceforth  to 
grow,  till  the  little  one  became  a  thousand,  and  the 
small  one  a  strong  nation,  there  is  no  province  for 
anticipation  in  public  affairs,  and  "  the  philosophy  of 
history  "  is  a  phrase  without  meaning. 

The  after-training  which  met  it  here  was  precisely 
such,  you  instantly  observe,  as  befitted  its  origin,  and 
carried  on  the  development  which  was  prophesied  in 
its  nature.  It  was  an  austere,  protracted  training ;  not 
beautiful,  but  beneficent ;  of  labor,  patience,  legislation, 
war.  As  the  colonies  had  been  planted  according 
to  the  wise  maxim  of  Bacon — "  the  people  wherewith 
you  plant  ought  to  be  gardeners,  ploughmen,  laborers, 
smiths,  carpenters,  joiners,  fishermen,  fowlers,  with 
some  few  apothecaries,  surgeons,  cooks,  and  bakers,"  * 
— so  they  were  trained  for  practical  service,  for  long 
endurance,  for  the  arts  of  industry  not  of  beauty,  for 
ultimate  oneness  as  a  Nation,  and  a  powerful  impres- 
sion upon  mankind. 

Incessant  labor  was  their  primary  teacher ;   universal 

in  its  demands,  in  effect  most  salutary.     If  they  had 

been  idle  men,  supplied  with  abundant  resources  from 

abroad,  a  something  mystical  and   dark  would  have 

penetrated  their  spirit,  from  the  pathless  forests  which 

stretched  around,  from  the  lonely  seas  which  lay  behind, 

from  the  fierceness  of  the  elements,  from  their  sen~e 

of  dislocation  from  all  familiar  historic  lands.     There 

*  Essay  xxxiii, ;  "of  Plantations," 

6i 


Address. 

was,  in  fact,  something  of  this.  Certain  passages  in 
their  history,  certain  parts  of  their  writings,  are  only 
explained  by  it.  It  Would  have  been  general,  and 
have  wrought  a  sure  public  decline,  except  for  the 
constant  corrective  of  their  labor.  They  would  have 
seen,  oftener  than  they  did,  phantom  armies  fighting 
in  the  clouds,  fateful  omens  in  aurora  and  comet.*  The 
dread  of  witchcraft,  still  prevalent  in  the  old  world, 
would  more  widely  have  fevered  their  minds.  The 
voice  of  demons  would  have  oftener  been  heard,  in 
thp  howl  of  wolves,  or  the  winds  wailing  among  the 
pines.  But  the  sweat  of  their  brows  medicined  their 
minds.  The  work  which  was  set  for  them  was  too 
difficult  and  vast  to  allow  such  tendencies  to  get 
domination. 

A  continent  was  before  them  to  be  subdued,  and 
with  few  and  poor  instruments.  With  axe  and  hoe, 
mattock  and  plough,  they  were  to  conquer  an  unde- 
fined wilderness,  untouched,  till  then,  by  civilized  in- 
dustry ;  with  no  land  behind  to  which  to  retreat, 
with  only  the  ocean  and  the  sand-hills  in  the  rear. 

It  was  a  tremendous  undertaking ;  greater  than  any 

*  "  The  Aurora  Borealis,  the  beauty  of  the  northern  sky,  which  is  now 
gazed  upon  with  so  much  delight,  was  seen  for  the  first  time  in  New 
England  in  1721,  and  filled  the  inhabitants  with  alarm.  Superstition  be- 
held with  terror  its  scarlet  hues,  and  transformed  its  waving  folds  of 
light,  moving  like  banners  along  the  sky,  into  harbingers  of  coming 
judgment,  and  omens  of  impending  havoc.  Under  its  brilliant  reflection, 
the  snow,  the  trees,  and  every  object,  seemed  to  be  dyed  with  blood,  and 
glowed  like  fire." 

Barstow's  Hist,  of  New  Hampshire,  chap.  vii. 


The  Co7itinent  to  be  subdued. 

infant  people  had  ever  encountered  ;  greater,  fortunate- 
ly, than  they  themselves  knew  at  the  time.  Plutarch 
tells  us  that  Stasicrates  once  proposed  to  Alexander 
to  have  Mount  Athos  carved  into  a  statue  of  himself ; 
a  copious  river  flowing  from  one  hand,  and  a  city  of 
thousands  of  people  in  the  other ;  the  ^gean  archi- 
pelago stretching  outward  from  the  feet.  Even  the 
ambition  which  decreed  Alexandria,  and  made  Asia 
its  vassal,  might  have  pleased  itself  with  a  fancy  so 
colossal.  But  it  was  trifling,  compared  with  the  work 
which  the  colonists  of  this  country  were  called  to  take 
up ;  as  a  Macedonian  bay,  compared  with  the  ocean 
on  which  their  rugged  continent  looked.  Upon  that 
continent  they  were  to  impress  the  likeness  of  them- 
selves. What  Europe  had  only  partially  realized,  after 
its  centuries  of  advancing  civilization,  they  and  their 
children  were  suddenly  to  repeat,  fashioning  the  wil- 
derness to  the  home  of  commonwealths. 

The  strain  of  the  work  was  prodigious  and  unceas- 
ing. No  wonder  that  the  applications  of  science  have 
always  had  a  charm  for  Americans  I  No  wonder  that 
"  impossible  "  has  ever  since  seemed  here  a  foolish  word  ! 
But  the  muscle  which  was  built,  in  both  body  and 
will,  was  as  tough  and  tenacious  as  the  work  was 
enormous. 

They  had  to  secure,^by  invention,  where  English 
policy  permitted,  by  purchase,  where  it  did  not, — what- 
ever they  needed  for  the  comfort  of  life,  and  whatever 

means  of  culture  they  possessed.     Their  fisheries  were 

63 


Address. 

pushed  along  the  jagged,  tempestuous  coasts,  till  they 
struck  the  icy  barriers  of  the  pole.  Their  commerce 
was  cultivated,  against  the  jealousy  of  the  English  legis- 
lation, till,  in  Burke's  time,  you  see  to  what  it  had 
grown.  They  had  to  establish  their  own  free  schools  ; 
to  found  and  enlarge  their  needed  colleges ;  to  supply 
themselves  with  such  literature  at  home  as  could  be 
produced,  in  the  pauses  of  their  prodigious  labor  ;  to 
import  from  the  old  world  what  their  small  means  en- 
abled them  to  buy. 

They  had  their  chartered  liberties  to  maintain,  against 
Royal  hostility,  in  the  face  of  governors  who  hindered 
and  threatened,  if  they  did  not — like  Andros — compel 
the  clerks  of  their  assemblies  to  write  "  Finis"  midway 
on  the  records.  *  So  it  happened  to  them,  according  to 
Milton's  ideal  plan  for  a  perfect  education.  "  The  next 
remove,"  he  says,  "  must  be  to  the  study  of  politics ; 
to  know  the  beginning,  end,  and  reason  of  political 
societies ;  that  they  may  not,  in  a  dangerous  fit  of  the 
Commonwealth,  be  such  poor,  shaken,  uncertain  reeds, 
of  such  a  tottering  conscience,  as  many  of  our  great 
counselors  have  lately  showed  themselves,  but  stead- 
fast pillars  of  the  State."  The  plain  men  who  had 
come  here  from  Europe,  and  who  had  before  them  a 

*''His  Excellency,  Sir  Edmund  Andros,  Knight,  Captain-General 
and  Governor  of  his  Majesty's  Territory  and  Dominion  in  New  England, 
by  order  from  his  Majesty,  King  of  England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland, 
the  31st  of  October,  1687,  took  into  his  hands  the  government  of  this 
colony  of  Connecticut,  it  being  by  his  Majesty  annexed  to  the  Massachu- 
setts and  other  Colonies,  under  his  Excellency's  government.     FINIS." 

Secretary's  Allya's  record  ;  quoted  by  Palfrey,  voL  3»  p.  545. 
64 


Military  training  of  the  Colonists, 

wilderness  to  be  conquered,  were  trained  according  to 
this  generous  philosophy.  A  large  practical  sover- 
eignty had  to  be  in  their  hands,  from  the  beginning,  for 
their  self-preservation.  They  established  offices,  enacted 
laws,  organized  a  militia,  waged  war,  coined  money  ; 
and  the  lessons  which  they  learned,  of  legislative 
prudence,  administrative  skill,  bore  abundant  fruit  in 
that  final  Revolution  which  did  not  spring  from 
accident  or  from  passion,  which  was  born  of  debate, 
which  was  shaped  by  ideas,  and  which  vindicated 
itself  by  majestic  State-papers. 

Their  military  tuition  was  as  constant  as  their  work. 
Against  the  Indians,  against  the  French,  somewhere 
or  other,  as  we  look  back,  they  seem  to  have  been  always 
in  arms — so  uncertain  and  brief  were  their  interv^als 
of  peace.  Not  always  threatened  violence  to  them- 
selves, sometimes  the  remote  collisions  and  entangle- 
ments of  European  politics,  involved  them  in  these 
wars — as  in  that  great  one  which  commenced  in  the 
question  of  the  Austrian  Succession,  and  which  swept 
through  our  untrodden  woods  its  trail  of  fire ;  when, 
as  Macaulay  says  of  Frederick,  "  that  he  might  rob  a 
neighbor  whom  he  had  promised  to  defend,  black  men 
fought  on  the  coasts  of  Coromandel,  and  red  men 
scalped  each  other  by  the  great  lakes  of  North 
America."  Precisely  as  the  colonies  grew,  any  power 
hostile  to  Great  Britain  was  incited  to  attack  them. 
At  some  point  or  other,  therefore,  the  straggling 
and  interrupted  line  of  their  scanty  possessions  was 

<>5 


Address. 

lighted  with  conflagration,  vocal  with  volleys,  drip- 
ping with  blood,  down  almost  to  the  day  of  the  Revo- 
lution. 

But  from  this  incessant  martial  training  came  prac- 
tised skill  in  the  use  of  weapons,  a  cool  courage,  a 
supreme  self-reliance, — the  temper  which  looks  from 
many  portraits,  which  faced  emergencies  without  a 
fear,  and  whose  fire  withered  the  British  ranks  at 
Concord-bridge  and  on  Breed's-hill. 

There  is  not  much  that  is  picturesque  in  the  annals 
which  cover  the  hundred  years  after  New  Amsterdam 
became  New  York.  They  look,  to  the  world,  perhaps 
to  us,  for  the  most  part,  common-place.  Volcanic 
regions  are  the  more  picturesque  in  landscape  forms, 
because  of  the  sudden  violence  of  the  forces  which 
have  shattered  and  reset  them.  The  legends  cling  to 
rugged  peaks.  The  pinnacles  of  Pilatus  incessantly 
attract  them,  while  they  slide  from  the  smoother  slopes 
of  Righi.  So  a  convulsive  and  violent  history,  full 
of  reaction,  fracture,  catastrophe,  appeals  to  the  imag- 
ination as  one  never  does  that  is  quiet  and  gradual, 
where  a  people  moves  forward  in  steady  advance,  and 
the  sum  of  its  accomplishment  is  gradually  built  of 
many  particulars.  There  was  not  much  in  the  career 
of  the  colonists,  in  the  hundred  years  before  the 
Revolution,  which  poetry  would  be  moved  to  cele- 
brate, or  whose  attractive  pictorial  aspects  the  painter 
would  make  haste  to  sketch. 

But  the  discipline  answered  its  purpose  better  than 

66 


The  severe  Discipline  salutary. 

if  it  had  been  pictorial,  tragic.  It  was  apt  to  the  in- 
born temper  of  the  colonists.  It  fortified  in  them 
that  hardy  and  resolute  moral  life  which  they  had 
brought.  It  guarded  the  forces  which  were  their  birth- 
right from  waste  and  loss.  The  colony  of  Surinam, 
under  tropical  skies — where  .mahogany  was  a  firewood, 
and  the  Tonquin-bean,  with  its  swift  sweetness,  per- 
fumed the  air ;  where  sugar  and  spices  are  produced 
without  limit,  and  coffee  and  cotton  have  returned 
to  the  planter  two  crops  a  year — this  seemed,  at  the 
time,  a  prodigal  recompense  for  the  colony  of  New 
Netherland.  But  Guiana  demoralized  the  men  who 
possessed  it ;  while  the  harder  work,  under  harsher 
heavens,  gave  an  empire  to  those  who  adhered  to  these 
coasts.  No  unbought  luxuries  became  to  them  as 
dazzling  and  deadly  Sabine  gifts.  No  lazy  and  volup- 
tuous life,  as  of  tropical  islands,  dissolved  their  man- 
hood. Their  little  wealth  was  wrested  from  the 
wilderness,  or  won  from  the  seas  ;  and  the  cost  of  its 
acquirement  measured  its  permanence.  They  were,  as 
a  people,  honest  and  chaste,  because  they  were  workers. 
Their  ways  might  be  rough,  their  slang  perhaps  strong. 
But  no  prevalence  among  them  of  a  prurient  fiction 
inflamed  their  passions ;  no  fescennine  plays  blanched 
the  bloom  of  their  modesty.  Their  discipline  was 
Spartan,  not  Athenian ;  but  it  made  their  life  robust 
and  sound.  The  sharp  hellebore  cleansed  their  heads 
for  a  more  discerning  practical  sense.    They  never  had 

to   meet   what   Carlyle   declares  the   present   practi- 

67 


Address. 

cal  problem  of  governments :  ''  given,  a  world  of 
knaves,  to  educe  an  honesty  from  their  united  ac- 
tion." 

As  their  numbers  increased,  and  their  industry  be- 
came various,  the  sense  of  independence  on  foreign 
countries  was  constantly  nurtured.  The  feeling  of  in- 
ward likeness  and  sympathy  among  themselves,  the 
tendencies  to  combine  in  an  organic  union,  grew  al- 
ways more  earnest.  Patriotism  was  intensified  into  a 
passion ;  since,  if  any  people  owned  their  lands,  cer- 
tainly they  did,  who  had  hewn  out  their  spaces  amid 
the  woods,  had  purchased  them  not  with  wampum 
but  with  work,  had  fertilized  them  with  their  own 
blood.  And,  at  last,  trained  by  labor  and  by  war,  by  edu- 
cational influences.  Christian  teachings,  legislative  re- 
sponsibilities, commercial  success, — at  last,  the  spirit 
which  they  had  brought,  which  in  Europe  had  been  re- 
sisted and  thwarted  until  its  force  was  largely  broken, 
but  which  here  had  not  died,  and  had  not  declined,  but 
had  continued  diffused  as  a  common  life  among  them 
all, — this  made  their  separate  establishment  in  the  world 
a  necessity  of  the  time.  "  Monarchy  unaccountable  is 
the  worst  sort  of  tyranny,  and  least  of  all  to  be  endured  by 
free-born  men  " — that  was  a  maxim  of  Aristotle's  poli- 
tics, twenty  centuries  before  their  Congress.  It  had  been 
repeated  and  emphasized  by  Milton,  while  the  ances- 
tors of  those  assembled  in  the  Congress  were  fighting 
for^'eedom  across  the  seas.*     Holland  had  believed  it, 

.    *  Milton  had  added  other  words,  in  the  same  great  discourse  of  Lib- 
68 


The  fruit  of  the  American  Spirit, 

and  protestant  Germany,  as  well  as  England.  It  be- 
came the  vivid  and  illuminating  conviction  of  the 
people  here  gathered;  and  in  its  light  the  Republic 
dawned.  The  fore-gleams  of  that  were  playing  already 
along  the  horizon,  while  Burke  was  speaking.  Before 
his  words  had  reached  this  country,  the  small  red  rim 
was  palpable  on  the  eastern  sky,  showing  the  irresisti- 
ble up-spring  of  that  effulgent  yet  temperate  day 
which  never  since  has  ceased  to  shine. 

All  this  was  the  work  of  that  early  distinctive  Amer- 
ican Spirit,  so  rich  in  its  history,  so  manifold  in  its 
sources,  so  supreme  in  its  force.  It  had  not  been 
born  of  sudden  passion.  It  was  not  the  creature  of 
one  school  of  theology.  It  had  had  no  narrow  insu- 
lar origin.  It  was  richer  and  broader  than  Burke 
himself  discerned  it  to  be.  Holland  and  France, 
as  well  as  England,  had  contributed  to  it.  From  the 
age  of  Elizabeth,  and  of  William  the  Silent,  of  Henry 
Fourth  and  Gustavus  Adolphus,  it  had  burst  forth  upon 
these  shores.  It  had  here  been  working  for  a  century 
and  a  half,  before  the  Stamp  Act.     It  had  wrought  in 

erty,  which  might  have  served  as  a  motto  for  the  Congress  convened  at 
Philadelphia,  just  a  hundred  years  after  his  death  : 

"  And  surely  they  that  shall  boast,  as  we  do,  to  be  a  free  nation,  and 
not  to  have  in  themselves  the  power  to  remove  or  to  abolish  any  governor, 
supreme  or  subordinate,  with  the  government  itself  upon  urgent  causes, 
may  please  their  fancy  with  a  ridiculous  and  painted  freedom,  fit  to  cozen 
babies,  but  are  indeed  under  tyranny  and  senatude,  as  wanting  that  power 
which  is  the  root  and  source  of  all  liberty,  to  dispose  and  economize  in 
the  land  which  God  hath  given  them,  as  masters  of  family  in  their  own 
house  and  free  inheritance." 

The  Tenure  of  Kings  and  Magistrates. 

^9 


Address, 

Europe  for  three  generations,  before  the  first  hemlock 
hut  sheltered  a  white  face  between  Plymouth  and 
Jamestown.  It  had  been  born  of  vehement  struggle, 
vast  endurance,  sublime  aspiration,  heroic  achievement : 
and  on  this  reserved  continent  of  the  future  God  gave 
it  room,  incentive,  training.  Assault  did  not  destroy  it 
here.  Reaction  did  not  waste  it.  It  flourished  more 
royally,  because  transplanted.  At  last  it  sent  back  of 
its  inherent,  perennial  life,  to  revive  the  lands  from 
which  at  the  outset  it  had  come. 

The  work  of  that  spirit  is  what  we  inherit.  It  was 
that  which  got  its  coveted  relief  from  paying  three- 
pence a  pound  upon  tea,  by  erecting  another  empire 
in  the  world.  It  was  that  which  counseled,  wrought, 
and  fought,  from  the  first  Congress  to  the  last  capitula- 
tion. It  is  that  which  every  succeeding  reminiscence, 
in  thie  coming  crowded  centennial  years,  will  constant- 
ly recall.  It  is  that  which  interlinks  our  annals  with 
those  of  the  noblest  time  in  Europe,  and  makes  us 
heirs  to  the  greatness  of  its  history.  It  is  that  which 
shows  the  providence  of  Him  who  is  the  eternal  Master- 
builder  of  states  and  peoples,  and  the  reach  of  whose 
plan  runs  through  the  ages  ! 

The  patriot's  duty,  the  scholar's  mission,  the  phil- 
anthropist's hope,  are  illustrated  by  it.  For  as  long  as 
this  spirit  survives  among  us,  uncorrupted  by  luxury, 
unabated  by  time,  no  matter  what  the  strife  of  parties, 
no  matter  what  the  commercial  reverse,  institutions 

which  express  it  will  be  permanent  here  as  the  moun- 
70 


May  it  be  endurmg  f 

tains  and  the  stars.  When  this  shall  fail,  if  fail  it  does, 
it  will  not  need  a  foreign  foe,  it  will  not  ask  domestic 
strife,  to  destroy  our  liberties.  Of  themselves  they  will 
fall;  as  the  costly  column,  whose  base  has  rotted;  as 
the  mighty  frame,  whose  life  has  gone  ! 

May  He  who  brought  it,  still  maintain  it : — that 
when  others  are  gathered  here,  a  hundred  years  hence, 
to  review  the  annals  not  yet  written,  they  may  have 
only  to  trace  the  unfolding  of  its  complete  and 
sovereign  life  1 

71 


t 


^. 


^- 


PROCEEDINGS. 

At  a  special  meeting  of  the  New  York  Historical 
Society,  held  in  the  Academy  of  Music,  in  the  City  of 
New  York,  on  Thursday  evening,  April  15th,  1875,  to 
celebrate  the  Seventieth  Anniversary  of  the  Founding  of 
the  Society  : 

The  proceedings  were  opened  with  prayer  by  the  JKev. 
Thomas  E.  Vermilye,   D.D.,  LL.D.,  senior  minister  of 
the   Collegiate   Reformed  Protestant  Dutch  Church  of 
this  Cit3^ 

The  Anniversary  Address  was  then  delivered  by  the 
Rev.  Richard  S.  Storrs,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

Upon  the  conclusion  of  the  address,  Mr.  William 
CuLLEN  Bryant  rose  and  said  : 

"Ladies  and  Gentlemen:  The  profound  silence  with 
which  you  have  listened  to  the  honorable  speaker  attests 
your  interest  in  the  subject,  and  the  ability  with  which  it 
has  been  delivered.  The  orator  has  well  expounded  to 
you  the  manner  in  which  the  spirit,  out  of  which  our  free 
institution  first  had  its  origin,  penetrated  the  hearts  of 
the  people,  how  it  was  carried  into  full  efifect  in  the  insti- 
tution under  which  it  is  our  good  fortune  to  live.  While 
his  voice  is  yet  ringing  in  your  ears,  while  his  brilliant 
periods  yet  give  forth  their  music  in  your  memory,  I 
will  not  attempt  to  say  anything  upon  the  subject.  I 
will  only  present  a  resolution  which  I  am  sure  you  will 
all  agree  to  with  perfect  unanimity  : 

"■'Resolved,  That  the  thanks  of  this  Society  be  presented  ' 
to  the  Rev.  Dr.  STORRsfor  his  able,  eloquent  and  instruct- 
ive discourse  delivered  this  evening,  and  that  he  be  re- 
quested to  furnish  a  copy  for  publication." 

This  resolution  was  then  seconded  by  Mr.  William  M. 
EVARTS  in  the  following  words  : 

"Mr.  President:  It  gives  me  great  pleasure  to  second 
the  resolution  which  Mr.  Bryant  has  so  fitly  offered,  and 

73 


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Proceedings. 


<i 


in  doing  so  1  feel  that  I  express  not  only  the  unanimous 
sentiment  of  the  members  of  our  Society,  but  the  general 
judgment  of  this  large  and  cultivated  audience,  who  with 
rapt  attention  have  now  been  alternately  instructed  by 
the  learning  and  charmed  by  the  eloquence  of  the  orator. 
He,  indeed,  has  shown  us,  in  the  rapid  and  compre- 
hensive survey  that  he  has  given  us  of  our  origin,  how 
we  came  to  be  the  great  nation  that  we  conceive  our- 
selves this  day  to  be ;  that  these  communities  had*' their 
infancy  from,  a  great  parentage,  and  were  born  at  an  il- 
lustrious time.  Your  Society,  amoiig  its  great  services, 
has  been  in  none  more  fortunate  than  in  the  contributions 
to  the  literature  and  the  learning  oi  the  times  which,  in 
the  long  and  distinguished  list  of  your  orators,  are  in- 
scribed in  the  memory  of  the  people.  But  in  none  have 
you  been  more  fortunate  than  to-night,  and  none  of  your 
orators  have  been  more  fortunate  than  he  in  the  appro- 
priateness to  the  times  of  which  they  spoke,  and  in  what 
they  produced  for  our  consideration.  What  fitter  pro- 
logue and  preparation  for  the  eloquence  which  is  to  illus- 
trate the  successive  events  of  history  in  this  centennial 
period,  than  this  your  Society's  orator  and  his  oration?" 

The  resolution  was  adopted  unanimously,  and  the  bene- 
diction having  been  pronounced  by  the  Rev.  William 
Adams,  D.D.,  LL-D.,  the  Society  adjourned- 

Extract  from  the  minutes,  etc. 

Andrew  Warner, 

Recording  Secretary. 
74 


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